


From the Horizon Down

by Catwithamauser



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fix-It, Future Fic, Not A Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-07-22 12:45:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 40,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7439890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catwithamauser/pseuds/Catwithamauser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years after he walked out of Laurel Castillo's life, Frank Delfino walks back in.</p><p>Or, Laurel's not keeping things together as well as she thinks she is.  Frank keeps saying things he really, really shouldn't.  And they both make a series of bad decisions like it's their job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Basically this is my take on an S2 fix-it fic. Except instead of fixing things, I break them even worse first. And then see if I can fit things together again.  
> I happen to be pretty great at breaking things, we'll see how well I can fix them...

It's only 10:30 and Laurel’s day has already gone to shit. First it was the busted water heater in her apartment. Next, the asshole who ran into her as she was leaving the coffee shop, spilling her double espresso and causing her to drop her phone.

Now her screen is cracked and she’s been running caffeine-less for going on four hours and she's gotta admit, it's taking a toll. The only blessing in the whole situation was that the spilled coffee didn't get anywhere but her shoes, because Laurel really, really didn't want to have to imagine explaining to Judge Parker just why she’s got a giant brown stain all over her skirt.

That little bit of luck, however, was overshadowed by the call she got as soon as she sat down at her desk, the already pounding caffeine headache making her want to run back to bed. Her nineteen year old, straight A-student client, sent to county cause he couldn’t make bail, was apparently in the infirmary, because someone decided he was too pretty and had too many teeth. And there wasn't a damn thing Laurel could do except make a few calls, hope the kid’s injuries were severe enough he could stay in medical until their trial in two weeks.

And now it's 10:30 and she has a dozen clients she needs to meet with before their preliminary hearings at 1:00. And still, no damn coffee. Because apparently the intern broke the Keurig machine. Great.

She glances at the stack of client folders, tries to decide whether to meet with them by crime or by name. It's a game she sometimes plays with herself, when things get too much, letting herself meet with the client with the most interesting name first, or the one with the most bizarre charge sheet. That's not really the way it's supposed to work, but, Laurel thinks, when she has a caseload of a hundred-something and a work day easily hitting double digits on a salary that would make her weep if she ever really thought about it, well, she’s gotta do what she can to keep entertained, get herself through the day.

She scans through the files, nothing really jumping out at her, huffs slightly in frustration. Of course, she thinks, it’s one of those days when she can't even catch a break on clients. And then she sees it, a laugh tumbling out of her before she can help it. Someone’s got to be fucking with her.

She opens the file, scans through the criminal complaint, the client information sheet. Well, she takes it back. If someone's fucking with her, they fucked with her client first, because that's his real name. Anthony Montana. Tony. _Tony Montana._ Laurel tries not to, but she laughs again. She feels like it's the first time in days that she’s really laughed, not a sharp little bark, something sarcastic and mean, not a polite chuckle when she has to, but something genuine, something light.

She finds the closest deputy, tells them to pull Tony Montana into the holding room and scans through his charge sheet again. Grand theft. Auto. Trafficking in stolen parts, so more theft. Great. Probably running a chop shop, but the cops don't seem to have charged him for it yet. No priors that she can see, but well, that doesn't mean much. Just means he hasn’t been caught. Till now. And well, it's her job to see that the criminal complaint, a couple nights in lockup, are the worst things he gets out of this whole mess.

The deputy raps on the glass of the holding room, startling Laurel and letting her know Mr. Montana is inside, secured, ready for her. Great. One down and eleven left to go.

Laurel sighs, wishes that she’d had coffee, even some shitty day-old dregs, anything, but sucks it up, swings the door open and prepares herself to meet with one Mr. Anthony Montana, car thief.

She’s still scanning the file as she enters, doesn't look up. She’s done this enough times to know what she’ll see; orange jumpsuit, day old stubble, hollow eyes, the musky stink of prison shampoo hanging over his head like a cloud. She’s seen it too many times and sometimes she just can't anymore. Even to get an early glimpse of the unfortunately named Tony Montana.

She's pulling the rickety metal chair out from the table, scraping it against the ground when she hears it, a gasp, a sharp intake of breath, like the man in front of her has just been stabbed, all the air leaving him at once.

She looks up, sharply, and yeah, it's like time stops, like all the air, all the color leaves the world at once. She’s sure she gasps too, sure her hands are shaking, sure her whole body’s shaking, sure that it's no longer due to the lack of caffeine. Fuck.

Laurel’s pretty sure she says it out loud, but it's like all the sound has vanished too. There’s a distant humming in her ears, like rushing wind, like everything's thousands of miles away. The only thing left in the universe is him. Him and her. Fuck.

She wants to say something. Hi, maybe. How are you? Where’ve you been? Those’d be good places to start, Laurel thinks. I’ve missed you. I hate you. I might still love you. Why Tony Montana? Maybe something funnier, like ‘Of all the gin joints in all the world’? No. _No_.

She doesn't think she’s ever been this at a loss for words, not even at eleven and tiny and petrified and capable only of repeating ‘no, no, no’ over and over and over, her father brushing her voice aside like ants, like crumbs, like the worthless, meaningless sounds they were. She doesn't think she’s ever been this scared, though Laurel slams _that_ door shut tight, locks the thought away before she can give it life.

“I didn't believe the guard when he told me,” _he_ speaks, finally, breaking whatever spell has lingered between them, has been building between them for years, time and silence and distance no match for it. His voice is the same, Laurel thinks, choking back a sob, a sigh, a laugh; she doesn't really know. God, she doesn't know anything. Just his voice, still the same, low and sweet and gravelly. She should have just gone with Nick Beckman’s file first. Started from the top, like everyone else does.

“What?” Laurel chokes out, her voice sounding cracked, sounding sharp, sounding like maybe she’s on the edge of going mad.

“Guard told me I’d lucked out,” he explains, shaking his head wryly, a crooked grin, so familiar, so unexpected slipping onto his face. “Told me I’d snagged the hot PD. Told him I’d believe it when I saw it…and, well…”

“And?” Laurel prompts, trying to match his grin, trying to keep her voice light, teasing. She wants to kiss him until she chokes the life out of him, that's what she really wants.

“Gotta hand it to Officer Murphy,” he says. “He wasn't bullshitting. You’re still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

And that, Jesus, how is Laurel supposed to respond to that? When he’s looking at her like a drowned man who’s just found water, like she’s his salvation, like he used to look at her late at night when he thought she was sleeping, like he wanted to memorize every last line and curve of her face because he knew it would be over too soon. How the fuck is she supposed to answer that?

“It's good to see you, Laurel,” he continues, and something about his smug little grin goes serious, smoothes out into a frown. He always had that skill, to go from joking to deadly earnest before her brain could catch up. He reaches his hands across the table, goes to take her hand, forgets they’re shackled and just winds up straining against the chains, hands finally settling, heavy in the middle of the table. Laurel pulls her own hands into her lap, slowly, doesn't think she can let her body be anywhere near his, not now, not ever, not anymore, doesn't think she’s strong enough to let him touch her. She doesn't know what will happen if she does, if his skin meets hers, wonders what kind of reaction it will set off, an explosion or an endless, endless fall. She doesn't know, she doesn't know. It's too dangerous, she thinks, she knows, and too painful. “You look good, really good.”

Something about the way he says that, smirking and confident and just a little coy, God, Laurel remembers what she loved about him once, what made her fall for him even when she knew she shouldn't, knew what a bad damn idea it was, even then. But she’s older now, and wiser and it really, really shouldn't do the same thing to her now. It does though, sends a little thrill of something shooting through her, making her heart speed a little faster, her breath hitch in her throat. She tightens her hands into fists in her lap, tight enough her fingernails score deep marks into her palms, send little pinpricks of pain to jumpstart her brain again. 

“Can't say the same about you,” she tells him, trying for wry, trying for teasing and maybe some gallows humor, but it just comes out sounding like she’s exhausted.

“What?” he asks her with a grin, gesturing with his shackled hands to his prison issue jumpsuit. “Cause of this? I thought orange was the new black?”

“Auto theft,” she forces herself to begin, reading from the charge sheet, ignoring the look he’s giving her, eyes twinkling and sparking and filled with something deep and bottomless she can’t begin to try and name. “Trafficking parts. You’re looking at a felony two for the car, probably felony two for the parts; they haven't given me a value on it yet.”

“It’ll be an F2,” he tells her easily, his eyes sparking with something like warmth. “I’d be an idiot not the know their value, right?”

“Smarter thing would’ve been not to get caught,” she quips before she can help it.

He laughs, short and quick, shakes his head at her. “Knew I forgot something.”

“You’re gonna do time,” she tells him, voice like a warning. “Unless I can spring you free of this. Or you give me something to trade, some way to make a deal.”

“You know I can't do that.”

He says it so simply that she knows, _knows_ , he’s caught up in something worse than a jail sentence. How is it, she thinks, that she can still read him so well, still decipher the secrets of his skin, his eyes like it’s a language she was born reading. Laurel finds herself nodding, rolling her shoulders to shrug the tension from her skin. This day could not get worse, she thinks, not if it tried.

“Then I guess,” she tells him. “I’ll just have to get you off.”

She realizes her mistake as soon as she’s said it, hasn't been so amateur in her choice of words in _years_. But with him, well, she just can't help herself, just can't fucking think straight around him.

He laughs, she knew he would and the sound hits her like a punch in the throat, steals all her air, sends little needles of tears springing to her eyes. At one point she probably would’ve traded her whole life to hear that sound again, probably would’ve destroyed the world to hear him laugh again. Maybe still would, if she’s being honest. “I bet you say that to all your clients,” he tells her.

“I will though,” she tells him, vehemently, swallowing hard against the thick knot of something in her throat. “Guard didn't tell you, but I’m also the best PD you’re gonna get.”

He shakes his head again, grins back at her, wide and teasing. “Didn’t have to tell me. Soon as I saw you walk in, I knew I’d be ok.”

“Yeah?”

“Course,” he tells her with one of those quick, confident shrugs that used to make her want to press her lips to his, run her teeth across his throat, used to make her want to beg until she was hoarse. “You’ve always been the best thing that ever happened to me, why should this be any different?”

Fuck. Just. Just fuck. Laurel leaves the room, slams the door behind her, presses her back, her palms hard against the cold, cold walls, tries to breathe. Her eyes are closed tight and she tries to imagine herself someplace else, not this dingy hallway in lockup in the Philly County Courthouse, but Providence in summer, the boats flitting across the water like dragonflies, or her grandmother’s house in Mexico, warm walls and warm breeze and warmer smiles. She can’t be here, God, she can’t be here.

But she has to go back in, tries to still her breathing until that's something she can do. She’s not sure what excuse she used to leave the room, hopes it was a good one, hopes it was believable even if he could see in her face the lie it was. She’s falling apart, she's never felt better. Not in five goddamn years has she felt like this, like she’s traveling at great speed somewhere, maybe disaster, and doesn't even care, knows she won't feel the impact when it comes. 

She has to go back in, she tells herself, has to finish up the initial interview so she can go meet the next of her clients, go represent them at their prelims in, oh god, two hours now. Fuck.

She takes a long, deep breath, stills her heart, tells herself it's just another client, doesn't believe the lie even as she thinks it. If it were just another client her hands wouldn't be shaking and she certainly wouldn't be feeling like she’s losing her mind, like someone has taken the rug from under her feet and all the gravity has left the room and she might eventually come back down to earth, but it won't be for a while.

“Tony,” she says as she enters the room again, sits back down, wills her heart to stop pounding. Laurel’s proud of herself when she hears her voice, steady and clipped and just so fucking business-like. Michaela, if she ever actually saw Michaela anymore, would be so damn proud of her. She’s a fucking champion of repression right now, she thinks. “You’re going by Tony now, right? Tell me about any alibi you might have.”

He spreads his hands wide against the table, as wide as he can with the cuffs still on them. “Let's not do that huh,” he prompts, voice soft, pleading, and oh, oh, Laurel can’t keep the hitch from her breath, the gasp from her throat, the shiver that arcs through her. “I’m not Tony, you know I’m not.”

“Fine,” she tells him, making her voice cold, trying to make her heart cold too. “Frank. Frank Delfino. Tell me about the case, so I can actually help you.”

“No alibi,” he tells her smoothly. “You read the complaint. They found me, the car, the parts.”

“Can they prove you stole the car? Chopped the parts?” she counters. Laurel’s been doing this long enough to know all the tricks, all the ways to shake a client loose from a certain jail sentence, all the ways to plant just enough doubts in the mind of a jury. “Or just that you were there, in the garage?”

“Fingerprints were on everything,” he shrugs. “Won't be hard to do.”

“Just proves you were there,” she scoffs, a little thrill sliding through her. This is what she lives for, the argument, the battle, for finding a way out of the maze that no one else can see. “No crime in that.”

Tony, no, _Frank_ sits back in his chair, watches her, a little smile playing around his lips. He looks pleased, satisfied with something, though Laurel can’t come near thinking of what. “You’re good,” he tells her. “I always knew you would be, but it's nice to see you in action, nice to know I was right.”

“Frank,” she growls, because he can't, can't be doing this right now, distracting her from her goddamn job, not when it's his freedom, his life she’s trying to save. “That doesn't help anything.”

“It helps me,” he tells her forcefully and he reaches both hands up to run through his beard, a little longer now, a little more unkempt and with a few grey hairs she doesn't remember him having. But time does that, she thinks, time and life and this, this day, this unending torture of a day. His fingers card through the wiry hairs, tugging at his chin and Laurel thinks, oh, _oh,_ she's never seen that in him before, the gesture sudden and jarring and reminds her that no, this is not the man she knows, this is not the man she loves, _loved_. Loved, she corrects herself, loved once, past tense. That man is a ghost and this man is a stranger. “It helps me to know you’re doing ok.”

She laughs, she can’t help herself. Because until this morning, until maybe twenty goddamn minutes ago, she probably would've said yeah, yeah, sure, she’s doing great. And meant it. Really, truly fucking meant it. And now, now, if she answers him it will be sarcastic, it will be mocking, it will be a lie. She’s not doing ok. She’s so far from ok right now she’s not even sure she knows what ok looks like anymore. She’s not just not in the same ballpark as ok, she’s probably not even on the same planet. That's what she wants to tell him. That her pretty great, pretty damn ok life has just gotten blown up and she’s not even sure she misses it, not even sure she really wants to check for survivors. That's how she’s fucking doing, right now, thank you very goddamn much.

“I’ll be ok once I get your case sorted out,” she tells him, because that at least is close enough to the truth not to feel like a lie in her throat, not to churn in her gut and scorch her tongue. Because once Frank Delfino or Tony Montana or whoever he is now is out of her life, Laurel thinks she might be able to breathe again, thinks her life might go back to being close to fine.

Eventually. One day. Maybe in another five years.

“Were you there for the search?” she asks then, taking a deep breath, slowly in, slowly out, through her mouth, out her nose.

“Was it clean?”

“Didn't get a good look at the warrant,” he tells her. “Can't hurt to check right?”

“Probably too easy,” she says, mouth pulling tight, nails driving into her palms again. “How much bail can you make?”

“With or without a bondsman?”

“How much, Frank?” she demands. She doesn't want to play these games, can't play these games with him right now. She knows he’ll get a bondsman if he has to, will put up collateral to get out pending his next hearing. She knows a man like Frank won't sit around in jail, not if there’s any way to get out. He’s got the look of an animal in a trap, wild, darting eyes and tension in his limbs, and willing to chew his own leg off to get himself free. But oh, oh, God, how will she live now, how will she make it through her days knowing he’s out there, knowing he’s in the same city as her, breathing the same air, walking the same streets? It was easier when she told herself he was far away, Seattle or New Orleans, maybe Paris when she was feeling particularly weak, self-loathing. She could breathe so much better, the weight on her chest so much lighter when she didn't know he was so close, just beyond her reach, her fingertips just brushing against the ghost of him.

“I can probably do up to a fifty thousand if I have to,” he tells her, voice going stiff, going low.

“Is that ten percent or the full amount?” she knows these questions by heart, could ask them in her sleep, wishes she was sleeping, wishes she was not asking them of him, of Frank.

“Full amount,” he tells her, grin slipping against his teeth. “You really think I’m only good for 5K?”

The easy thing to do would be to point out that he is her client, is being represented by a PD, which, by definition, means he doesn't have much more than that. But Laurel has never been one for doing things easy, and when it comes to Frank, she’s never been one for doing things smart either.

“I don't know Frank,” she says, angry, frustrated before she can help herself. Laurel pushes her hair back from her face with one hand, pushes it tight against her scalp until it's almost painful. “How the hell would I know what you're good for? I don't know you anymore.”

And there it is, there it is, she thinks, wishes it were something else. They’re strangers and they’re not and she doesn't know what they are, what she’s doing. She wants the ground to swallow her up, she wants Frank to spend the next ten years upstate, she wants to never have seen the name Tony Montana on her client list. She wishes she’d taken that job in DC last year, followed that half-decent boyfriend to Capitol Hill instead of cutting him loose, sticking around here. She could’ve been fucking married by now if she’d played her cards right, and working for some fancy firm making a goddamn killing and not here, not here, not here. She could’ve been anywhere but here.

“Well,” he tells her slowly, trying to keep the grin off his face, but he can’t, he never could. It's small and tentative and insistent, like he won't stop fucking grinning until she is too. “You know I’m good for fifty grand. You know I stole a pretty fly ’08 Civic.”

“Allegedly,” Laurel adds before she can help herself, letting the smile work its way onto her face, just giving into the desire to grin back because she never could resist him. “Allegedly stole.”

“Right,” he agrees, and Laurel swears he fucking winks as the grin goes lopsided. “Allegedly stole. _And,_ you know I’m shit at picking aliases.”

And now she laughs, actually fucking laughs and she’d hate herself if it didn't feel so, so good to laugh. And yeah, Tony Montana, it is a _shit_ alias and it's so, so like something Frank would choose, the Frank she knew, the Frank that was hers.

“Vito Corleone was taken huh?”

“ _And_ Tony Soprano, would you believe it?”

She laughs again, thinks idly that he’s doing this on purpose, making her miss him, making her remember all the things she used to love best about him, except she doesn't know what purpose it would serve except to make her happy, make him happy, torture them both and she can’t, she _can not_ imagine what that would mean. “How often do people give you shit about it?”

“You're the first today,” he tells her, quirking an eyebrow at her. “Most people are more polite about it.”

“Well,” she says, sloughing off the momentary hurt that flashes across his face. “Most people think it's your real name.”

“That gonna screw me with a jury?”

“Wouldn’t put it past them,” she admits. “But I’m hoping I can finish this before it gets to a jury.”

“You gonna try pleading me down?” Frank asks her with a frown, a stubborn, jutting cast to his jaw. She knows that a plea isn't in the cards for him, not his style, even if it's smart. Whatever he’s been running from, whether it's the thing he started out fleeing or something new, something different and worse, she knows, he needs to continue to run, his life relies on continuing to run. She can see it in his eyes, in the way he’s gone lean in the years he’s been gone, wiry and edged in a way that her Frank never was. He’s been running this whole time, may never have left Philly, but he’s never stopped running.

The thought makes her sad, sadder than she would’ve thought, chest aching and tight. She wants him to rest, wants him to have peace, wants that for him with a fervor that shouldn't surprise her, but does.

“No,” she tells him finally, her words a sigh. “No pleas. You and me are gonna fight.”

“You have my back on this?” he asks her then, quirking an eyebrow so that she almost thinks he’s joking, almost, except she knows him too well, can hear the catch in his breath, like a tremor.

“I’ve always had your back,” she tells him, the words spilling out of her before she can think them through, think why this is such, such a bad idea. For him, for her, for the universe. “I’m always gonna have your back.”

He nods and Laurel sees the sudden tightness in his jaw, the way he glances away from her so she doesn't see him blink away tears. She wishes she didn't know him so well, wishes she didn't remember his body like its been tattooed to her skin, because then she could overlook it, pretend she didn't see. She wants to cry too, except she swore that she wouldn't, swore she wouldn't waste a single goddamn tear more on Frank Delfino. Still, she thinks, wasting a few on Tony Montana can't hurt, but not here, not while she has a job to do.

“Your prelim’s at 1:00,” she tells him, voice clipped, glancing away from his face, glancing down to his hands so she doesn't have to meet his eyes, she _can't_ meet his eyes. “They’ll read the charges, set bail, you know the drill. If you’re lucky we’ll have you out today.”

“What do you think my chances are?”

“Wanna place bets?” she asks, because she’s a terrible person and once upon a time, once long ago when she was young and stupid and so, so in love with the man who this man once was, she placed bets on bail, like The Price is Right; closest one who didn't go over wins. And it's sick and it's childish and she hasn't done it in years, has _never_ done it with one of her cases, but something compels her to speak, makes her make the offer, because once she loved this man and once he loved her and once there was no danger in the game.

Her father always told her nothing's worth doing if there's no risk involved, but her father was a bastard and he’s been dead for eighteen months now, and yet he’s always the little voice in her head, still, no matter how she tries to make him stop. So she just grins across the metal table at Frank, wide and teasing and challenging, waits for him to take the offer, knowing he will, because she knows him, maybe better than she knows herself.

“Sure,” he says, smiles thinly. “It’ll only be twenty thou. I heard we have Parker for prelim today. She’s always been a sucker for a pretty face.”

“By that logic, you’re looking at the full fifty,” she tells him, knocking her knuckles against the table, hard, a grin that tries for teasing, slips into mean moving across her face.

“Nah,” he says. “It’ll be twenty. You’ll get me to twenty.”

“I could fuck up,” she points out. “If I really cared about winning.”

“Oh you love winning still,” he agrees, smirks across the table at her. “I can see that clear as day. But what you love more is the clean win, the moral win. You love being the good-guy.”

What I love more is you, she wants to say, I love _you_ more. But she can’t, doesn't even know if it's really true, certain it isn't.

How can she love a ghost, a shadow, a memory? How can she love someone who doesn't love her, who could walk away from her without a glance back, without knowing, caring how it nearly destroyed her, what it did to her? She can't love that, even if she still wanted to. And she doesn't, tells herself she loves herself too much, has been through too much to be that weak.

“Well,” she tells him, voice suddenly thick, like she’s trying to hold back five years of things she’s wanted to say to him; I hate you, I love you, I ate spaghetti for dinner last Thursday and it wasn't as good as yours, there was an ad on the bus I know you’d laugh at. “I gotta go see my next client. Guess we’ll find out at 1:00 which of us is right.”

“Guess we will,” he nods, smiles and all the air goes out of Laurel’s lungs again. She stands, mechanically, goes to the door and raps, waits for it to open, for it to let her out again. She holds his gaze as he speaks, blue eyes meeting hers and she’s drowning, drowning and she doesn't give a damn. “It was really, really good to see you again, Laurel. Almost worth lockup to do it.”

She laughs again, despite herself, when all she really wants to do is cry. She’s never been able to get it right, not where Frank’s concerned. “You really wanted to see me,” she throws over her shoulder, voice so light, so casual it almost makes her gasp, almost fools herself. Laurel thinks that maybe she’s a better actor than she always thought, because this, here, well, it's a fucking master class in hiding what she feels, in disguising the things in her head. “You coulda just called.”

The laugh he gives her matches her own, desperate and ragged. God, she thinks, what has time done to them both, what creatures has it made them into? She slips out the door just as he speaks, pauses because she can't not hear him, hear his voice, now that it's been five years and she’s only just gotten him back. “You get me outta this jam, Laurel, and I’ll call whenever you want.”

“Deal,” she calls back, as the guard, Murphy, shuts the door behind her, goes to escort Frank back to holding. She hears his laughter follow her out into the hall, echo through the metal rooms, metal hallways as she goes, thinks his laugh will haunt her forever, thinks maybe that's ok, thinks maybe she wants him to haunt her, thinks maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing. 


	2. Chapter 2

She stands in the hallway again, outside the holding room, waits for Murphy to bring up the next client, Beckman, because she’s fucking learned her lesson about changing the order of things, about trying to be funny or smart. It's alpha-order from here on out, because Laurel is not sure she can get through eleven more client interviews and keep her hands from shaking, her voice from cracking.

Beckman’s in for Possession, of course he is, and its not his first offense. Laurel tells him she knows he’s lucky he didn't get busted with more, busted for Intent to Distribute too; tells him that she might be able to get him Probation but it isn't likely, not unless he gives someone up. He doesn't seem inclined to, though he tells her he can make any bail that's set, of course he can. She thinks she does a good job of keeping her voice steady, level, of keeping her hands from trembling, of keeping the wildness from her eyes.

She’s more inclined than usual today to talk about her father, about how he adopted the same code of silence and look where it got most of his people. Rotting in jail and her father richer, raking in the profits while everyone else suffered. But that's a moral lesson her clients aren't ever gonna hear, not that they’d be likely to listen to it anyway.

She doesn't know what's happening to her; she hates even thinking about her father, didn't even bother going down for the funeral, and here she is thinking about him a handful of times in an hour. Laurel knows it must be Frank, dredging up the past and all the terrible things she locks away and tells herself she forgets them.

Well fuck him, she thinks, fuck him if that's what he’s gonna do to her life. She's come too damn far, from Florida and blood and her father’s thick cologne, from Middleton and the smell of burning flesh and gunpowder, from all the things that once caused her to hide behind silence and polite smiles and walls bigger, stronger than she was, to let Frank screw things up, to upset the delicate house of cards she’s constructed for herself. No, he can come back in her life, she thinks, but he’s still a fucking visitor, a tourist, and she’s too damn smart and too damn strong to let him throw her off balance like this. And she has a fucking job to do.

She meets with the next client, a woman this time, Finch, in for assaulting her boyfriend, threatening to kill him. Finch can't make bail, tells her there's no way, because her boyfriend won't let her work and he’s not gonna put any money up right now, not when he’s pissed like this, maybe in a few days when he’s calmed down.

Laurel’s heard this story enough times she knows it by heart. She knows Finch is getting beat up, can see the fading bruises on her arms, can see the wariness in her eyes when she talks about the boyfriend, knows the boyfriend’s only pressing charges to teach her a lesson, to control her, prove just what happens when you call the cops. She thinks Finch isn't ever going to try it again, may wind up dead for it. Laurel tells her she’ll try to get her ROR; Finch has no priors, strong community ties, the whole nine yards. Asks her if she wants to go back home or if Laurel can help her find a place in a shelter, doesn't find herself surprised when Finch tells her she just wants to go back home, go back to her kids.

Laurel just nods, tells Finch she understands, tells her she’ll try to plead her down to just the Simple Assault, get her Probation, six months, a year maybe. That is, unless she wants to testify about the boyfriend’s abuse, see if the whole thing can get withdrawn.

She doesn't hold her breath, this isn't her first fucking rodeo, but she finds herself more disappointed than usual when Finch tells her no. Frank again, she thinks, fucking Frank Delfino reminding her of who she used to be, young and maybe impossibly naïve, thinking other people could find a justice in the world she never could. She’s learned since then, learned without him, and she’s better for it, stronger.

The rest of the clients go easier than the first three, couple of DUIs, couple more Possessions, a Stalking charge for a bit of a surprise, Receiving Stolen Property, Retail Theft, Bad Checks, and one Rape.

By the time she’s done with all twelve, she’s back to herself, her breath comes even and slow, her hands are still and her mind’s no longer racing. She barely thinks about Frank, focusing on each client, on their case, on their charges, on how best to get them out, spring them free with as little time as possible. That’s her job, to make the prosecution do their’s, make them prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. She's good at it, playing devil’s advocate, she's not just the hot PD, she’s the goddamn _best_ PD.

But all that crumbles away when they bring her clients out, all twelve of them and stick them in the jury box so the judge can cattle call them for their prelims. Twelve people and she can see only him, her heart in her throat and beating hard and fast. So no, it wasn't some hallucination. She looks away, tells herself he doesn't exist, that he's not there, focuses on Beckman, on his charges, on her arguments for a low bail amount, for nothing but perfunctory bail conditions. But God, still, her eyes drift to Frank, like he’s a magnet and only she can feel the pull. He smirks, smiles, looking pleased, looking proud and oh, oh, oh, it could've been like this once, could've been like this always if he hadn't left; him sneaking into the courthouse over lunch or when he had a break with Annalise, to watch her, to see her work, see her fucking _perform_.

Her words catch, stumble, and she glances down at her hands, down at the heavy oak counsel table, tries to reorient herself. She takes a long breath in, lets a long breath out. She can't think about what might have been, can't let herself be so weak, no, she has to focus on this, on this. She has a goddamn job to do and Laurel is nothing if not a virtuoso at keeping her focus, of pushing the dark things in her mind away, of shutting them out completely as though they don't even exist.

She pulls through with Beckman, doesn't think anyone even noticed her slip and gets his bail set at only $200,000. He’ll be out within the hour, Laurel thinks as the bailiff leads him away. Good, she thinks, hopes her luck holds through Finch.

Beckman could probably use a few weeks in jail, but Finch, well, Finch could use a few weeks away from her boyfriend, but not from her kids, not in jail. The woman’s been beat up enough, Laurel thinks, doesn't need to face it from any other side.

Her luck holds, thank fuck, Laurel thinks, Parker springing for ROR on Finch. Four kids under six’ll do that and man, Parker may be a sucker for a pretty face, but she’ll spring for a sob story too, used to volunteer her _pro bono_ hours for the local domestic violence org before she got on the bench, has always been sensitive to DV issues. Laurel has always appreciated that about Parker, appreciates it now all the more when she sees the way Finch closes her eyes, exhales like a lead weight has been lifted from her chest, like she can finally breathe again.

It's not a perfect result, Finch gets strict monitoring, a curfew and told she’s got to stay away from the boyfriend. Which means she can’t fucking go home, can't go back to her kids. Well, fuck. But it's better than being in jail, really, it really fucking is. And Laurel’ll give her the numbers for her contacts in the local legal aid orgs, law clinics and DV orgs, see what she can do to make sure Finch gets some help with custody, gets to see her kids. And she’ll make some calls to the DA, see if she can twist some arms and cash in some favors to get the stay away order removed by the weekend. She’s done worse, pulled off bigger miracles.

She’s not quite so lucky with the next three, but the first got drunk and crashed into a bridge with his kid in the car and the second well, he’s never gonna get his ass clean without a long stint in jail. The third she had a chance on, and then he had to open his mouth, try to argue with the judge. And well, that's the end of the line for him, poor bastard.

She can almost ignore Frank through it all, focus on her arguments, focus on the judge so she can tweak her words as she goes along, as she sees what works with Parker, what doesn't. She feels Frank’s eyes on her through it all, laser focused on her face like she’s got a spotlight on her, like he can't look away, like he's trying to memorize her face, like he can't get enough of her now that he has her. She tries to ignore it, can't, so she just accepts it, lets it happen, doesn't fight his focus but lets it ease over her, like gentle lapping waves licking at her toes. 

He called her Wallflower once, so, so long ago, but that was never really true about her. Laurel never minded attention, just realized when she was hardly more than a child that it had never paid for her to be the center of attention, always paid off when she could be quiet, when she could observe, watch, take in the details, let other people hang themselves with their words. Her childhood was filled with silence and secrets and barely disguised violence and she’s not sure she ever would’ve survived if she hadn't learned watchfulness, caution, hadn't learned the value of letting herself be overlooked, ignored, discounted.

But attention, well, she probably craved it more than she’s willing to admit, even now, because part of that shitty childhood meant that no one paid a damn bit of attention to her half the time, left her to her own devices or those of the sporadically attentive nannies. She was a girl who knew how to be silent but always wanted to scream. And Frank, well, Frank saw her, was probably the first person who really saw her, who she was when all that silence was stripped away from her, saw the darkness and the anger that she only barely managed to disguise, but saw everything else about her too, saw the good parts of her and loved them all.

So she lets him see her again, now, lets him see what she’s become in the years since he left, drops every last pretense, every barrier and just lets him look, take his fill of her.

And then he’s up, Frank, no, _Tony_. She forces herself to look at him, meet his eyes, sees his damn cocky smile, like he sees right through her, sees her plan, can see the outcome before she even starts speaking. Well, she thinks, trying not to sigh, she hopes he's right. He always had more faith in Laurel than she ever did, saw the things in her she wasn't always strong enough to see herself.

She argues her ass off, more vehemently than she really ought, uses more of the informal currency she has with Parker than she can really afford to lose on one man. But well, it's Frank and she feels like she owes it to him, owes it to him to fight, even when she shouldn't, even when the battle’s lost.

Parker looks amused at first, then pissed and finally, if not convinced, then at least resigned. She eventually sets bail at $40,000, which all things considered, is about what Laurel expected. He’ll have to put up $4,000 then. And Frank said he could afford it, so she guesses it’ll have to do. She glances over at him quickly, out of the corner of her eye, tries to gauge his reaction.

He’s sitting back in his chair, smirking still, and goddamnit, Laurel thinks, she’s gonna have to tell him not to fucking do that if they go to trial, thinks that if he wasn't doing that, making that look, lip curled almost into a sneer she could've gotten him down to $20K. Fucking serves him right, she thinks, cocky asshole. He’s seen enough criminal trials, seen enough defendants sink themselves that he ought to know better, wonders how he never learned how to present himself in court, wonders if he just can’t help it, can't resist where she's concerned. Laurel wouldn't put it past him. She knows she can't help herself around him either.

Parker is calling her next case, calling her stalking case, but Laurel can't fucking focus, she’s watching the bailiff lead Frank away instead, watches the way he walks, even shackled, with a swagger, a confidence he can't even bother disguising. She watches as he turns back towards her, flashes her a grin, smooth and wide, the kind he knows she loved. He mouths something at her, she has no idea what and raises his eyebrows at her like he expects some kind of response. She just nods at him, corners of her mouth teasing into something that could resemble a smile, turns her focus back to Parker, back to her next case.

Frank can wait, he can, Laurel tells herself that until she’s almost convinced it's true. He's not going anywhere, not yet, and there’s still time. For what, she doesn't let herself get that far, doesn't let herself think of what might come of letting Frank into her life again, even minimally, but she knows there will be time. Time to figure it out, whatever that may be.

  
She gets back to her office a couple hours later, sinks heavy into her rickety chair and lets her head fall back against it. She sighs, loud and long and slow, closes her eyes and lets the tension, the lingering exhaustion slip from her body, forces it away from her, away from her mind. She has no time to be weak, no time for rest.

“You doin’ alright?”

Jesus. Laurel looks up sharply at the voice, low and slow, her breath stuttering in shock, her eyes springing open, blinking rapidly. Frank. Of course. Just what her day needed more of.

He’s leaning, so, so casually against her door frame, arms crossed over his chest, tight little smile pulling half his mouth upwards. He's out of the jumpsuit, back in street clothes. And yet, she almost doesn't recognize him. She's used to him in suits, in starched shirts and waistcoats. And here he is in a pair of jeans coated in grease, in mud and a t-shirt that falls, soft and smooth, across the planes of his arms, his shoulders, his chest. God, she thinks, he could look good in anything, tries not to focus on the way the worn material clings to him, stretches taut over his body. She does not have time for those thoughts, does not have the strength to fight them or anything like the ability to figure out what those thoughts may mean.

“Yeah,” Laurel sighs, closing her eyes again, willing herself to wake up in next week when all this is less startling, like nauseating, when she’s gotten used to the idea of Frank, of his renewed presence in her life, when it doesn't make her stomach clench just knowing he’s so close. “Doing just perfect.”

“You look tired,” he tells her. “You working too hard?”

“Probably,” she laughs, opens her eyes and meets his, tries not to stop breathing. “What’re you doing here?”

He shrugs, so, so casual but Laurel can see the lie in his body, see the stiffness in his limbs, see the way his jaw tightens ever so slowly, the way his eyes watch hers like she may vanish at any moment, like he fears looking away. It makes her ache with longing. For him. For the past. For what once was and might have been.

“Come in,” she tells him when he makes no further moves. It can't hurt right, she thinks, knows the lie as soon as she thinks it. It hurts so, so much, already, and she hasn't done anything yet, hasn't been anywhere near as stupid, as reckless as she knows she’s going to be. “Come in and sit down.”

He smiles, tentative, hesitant, like he’s nervous, like he fears her and Laurel tries to tell herself not to notice, not to let it get to her, but she’s been telling herself a lot of things today and ignoring her own good judgement like it’s her job. So she lets it get to her, lets something wrap a heavy, clawed hand around her heart and dig in, tight.

“So how’re you doing Frank?”

He smiles, it's almost bitter, but with a hint of that old cockiness, that old assurance. “You mean aside from my steel bracelets this afternoon?”

“Yeah,” she tells him flippantly, matching his grin. “Aside from that.”

“I’m,” he shrugs, mouth quirking as he runs a hand across his face. His eyes are sad, she doesn't know how he does it, manages to look heartbroken, pained with barely anything changing in his face, all that happens is the corners of his eyes turn down, minutely, his brows pulling together, and yet it's like everything has changed. “I’ve been better, honestly.”

Laurel says nothing, tries to hide her surprise that he’s so forthcoming with her, that he’s being honest about how things are going. She expected he’d put up more of a fight, try to convince her everything was fucking perfect and golden in his life. It makes her hurt, somewhere deep in her chest like she's been cracked open and laid bare, ribs and guts and organs hanging out of her, bloody and broken, because she knows things aren't anywhere close to good in his life if he’s admitting this much to her. He used to trust her, he may still trust her, but she can see just how bad things have gotten by the way he sighs, heavy, by the way he looks so, so lost and like she’s the only hope, the only lifeline he has. 

No, she wants to tell him, no, you can't. You can't look at me like that, I can’t save you. She can’t be the person he needs, doesn't think she ever was.

“You gonna be ok though?” is all she asks instead.

He sighs, tries to smile but it dies on his lips. “I always am.”

“Where’ve you been Frank?” she asks softly, trying not to spook him. She doesn't move, barely even blinks because she thinks if she does anything, anything at all he’ll balk, he’ll run or clam up and she’ll never see him again.

He shrugs and that's all the answer she needs. He never fucking left Philly. Five years and no word and he never fucking left.

She wants to kill him, she wants to cry.

“You still in trouble?”

He shakes his head. “Not really.”

He’s lying, she knows he is, can read the lie on his face, the way he continues to meet her eyes, but it's though he’s looking through her, looking past her, like he knows she can decipher his body, his glances. She can, still knows the tells, but decides not to push him further, decides not to press her luck. It's enough he’s sitting here, sitting in front of her, alive and whole and still Frank. And yet, it's nowhere near enough, because this, this stilted, halting conversation, it's nothing like what there once was between them, the sparking, charged white hot connection they felt, even from the first. She hates it, hates knowing what once was, what they once had, hates knowing that they’ve been reduced to this, this limping shadow of a thing, two strangers making small talk.

“I wanted to call you,” he says then, voice hoarse, strangled and raw, like he’s trying not to speak those words, trying so hard to keep them inside, but can’t, like they’re bursting out of him like bombs. “Wanted to call you so many times.”

“Why didn't you?” Laurel thinks she sounds accusing to her own ears, an angry challenge in her voice. God, she thinks, it's been five years and she still can’t let it go, still fucking hates what he did, how he walked away, walked away from what they had, what they could’ve been, acted like it was nothing. She still sounds angry, hurt, and she is, God she is.

“I didn't think you wanted to speak to me,” he admits, looking down, looking away. “Not after…” he trails off, voice faltering like it slices him open to think about it, to even speak of it. “After what I did.”

“Frank…” she begins, and now it's her voice that cracks, now it's her eyes that swing away, glance towards the open door.

“No,” he tells her, cutting her off, voice harsh and low. “I wanna apologize. For keeping that from you. I never got the chance to.”

“Frank,” she says again. She tells herself she’s not mad, can’t be mad anymore, doesn't have any right to be, not now, not after so long. She tells herself that what matters is that he's back, that maybe, just maybe, she has a chance to set things right. What matters is that once he told her the truth, trusted her enough that he told her what he’d done, and then she’d gone and set this disaster unraveling because she was angry and hurt and she didn't fucking understand how a man like Frank, a man she’d loved, could go kill a girl on another man’s orders, strangle her into nothingness and then get up and walk around like it was nothing. 

And that was what she’d told herself for a long time, but she was too smart to just accept that answer and shrug it off; no, she was most hurt, most betrayed by her own blindness, her own inability to see what Frank was, a monster walking around in men’s clothes, yes, but a tame monster, a monster unleashed by other men. She was most betrayed by herself, by her own eyes, her own judgement, and eventually she wised up to her own blindness, only months after Frank had left. 

He was not a man like her father, a man who would do anything for money, power; treated everything in his path, even his children, like a pawn to be discarded in service of victory. Frank was a piece too, maybe not a pawn, maybe something more important, but still acting in service of a higher power, a tame killer kept on Sam’s tight, choking leash. She hated herself for a long time for not seeing that, for having spent so long under the same roof as a man like Sam Keating, cold and ruthless and really just a beast with a man’s face, spent so long watching him turn men into monsters and then monsters into broken things, into his own private army of mindless killers, hated that she couldn't see what Sam was, what Frank was, that she loved Frank so blindly, so totally, she couldn't see the chains that kept him from her. “I don't care about that. I know why you did it now, and I get it. And, and I didn't mean any of what I said to you. I tried calling, but,” she shrugs, trails off. 

“Yeah,” he says, still looking away from her, jaw tightening. “Must’ve been hard, the way we left things. I’m sorry about that too.”

“It's fine,” she tells him, curtly, cutting him off.

She doesn't want to think about it, about how hard it was, about how she fought herself at every turn to walk away from him, from his ghost, the memory of him that still haunts her, not to throw herself against the wall until she was broken and bloody, not to ruin herself chasing after him, but to accept that he was gone, that she was alone, that what they had was a lie, was meaningless and that she was better off without him. She didn't want to believe any of that at first, but Laurel knows she’s nothing if not pragmatic, eventually had to accept the truth, that she was not as important to him as he was to her. He wouldn't have left her if she was, it's that simple.

Her eyes close, briefly, wincing against the harsh light of the past. God, she can't think about that horrible end to her 1L year, she won't let Frank unearth the corpse of those terrible fucking six months when she was walking around in a haze of anger and sorrow and half-cocked plans to track Frank down, force him back into her life. And then she grew the fuck up. Or at least told herself she did.

She’s not so sure about that now, now that he’s back, because she can feel the desperation under the surface of her skin like a tumor, growing, growing, the desperate blinding need. For him. She tries to cut that thought off, strangle it until it's dead.

She may want him, back in her life and in her bed and no, no, no. She’s not that fucking desperate, not that fucking weak. She’ll crack the door to him, but she won't swing it wide, won't invite him in.

“Laurel,” Frank says then, and his voice dips an octave, but going so, so soft and it's so, so familiar. He leans forward and she knows, instantly, how much he wants to touch her, watches his fingers flex, watch them curl and then settle. He always fucking wanted to touch her. And at first she hated it, and then she loved it and now she just fucking craves it, craves it like a drug. But she's smart enough to know she can't let him close, needs to be cautious, that it isn't as simple as saying ‘welcome back, what's for dinner.’

“It's obviously not fine,” he continues, gripping the armrests of the office chair tightly, his eyes still sad, wary like he thinks she’ll boot him from her office, from her life. “I want to make it fine.”

“You can't,” she tells him harshly. “It's not something you can fix.”

“Laurel,” he repeats, sounding like she’s punched him, pained and breathless.

“It happened Frank,” she says with a curt shrug. “And it hurt. And we can't go back and change it. But we can move forward, ok.”

“What does that mean?” he asks, and once again, Laurel realizes she doesn't know this Frank at all. He looks like the Frank she knew, but he’s a stranger wearing Frank’s skin, looking at her with Frank’s eyes. The Frank she knew would never ask something like that, would take any crumbs she gave him and cling to them with whatever desperate hope he had left. This Frank, well, this Frank is something new, something cautious, tentative. And maybe something good, because he’s listening, because he’s not just assuming that everything will be fine, that she’ll come around eventually. He actually wants to know, maybe, actually wants to change, to fix things. Maybe. Or he’s learned better how to parrot the words she wants. She doesn't know, not anymore, but she’ll give him her faith, her trust, because of who he was to her once, she owes that at least to the ghost of Frank Delfino.

“It means that I’m not going to hold it against you here, in this office. I’m still gonna do what I can to help your case. It means that if you want anything beyond that, we have to start from the beginning.”

“But you're willing to start?” God, she thinks, he looks like a little boy, eager, eyes raised in something like hope, a small, tentative smile lighting up his face. She thinks that it will crush him if she lets him down, if she disappoints him.

She nods, sighs, feels like she’s stepped off a cliff, falling, falling somewhere she can't see to the bottom of. She doesn't think she minds, doesn't think she’ll even feel the resulting crash. “Yeah, I’m willing to start with you.”

“Even though you're not supposed to?”

Laurel rolls her eyes, tries not to snort. “Our sexual relationship predates my representation. Also, I have no intention of sleeping with you again. Technically,” she tells him. “There’s no conflict.”

Except that, _that_ is a fucking lie, and she knows it. Her brain may say one thing, may tell her all the reasons why wanting Frank is a bad idea, why _Frank_ himself is a bad idea given flesh, given form, but it doesn't matter to her heart. No, no, _no_. Not that, not that.

Laurel tells herself she is not that fucking foolish, not that fucking pathetic. It doesn't matter to her _body_ , to the weakness of her skin that craves him still. Her body has every goddamn intention of sleeping with him, as terrible a decision as that would be. Hell, if she shut off her brain for maybe half a minute she’d probably fuck him right here on her desk, hike her skirt around her hips and fuck him quick and messy and desperate and so, so necessary.

He laughs, eyes shining, like he can hear the lie in her voice, see the truth in her eyes. “I like this you,” he tells her as his grin goes slanted. “I’m glad I get to see it.”

What, she thinks, what can she even say to that? He knows, still, just how to get to her, knows exactly what to say to make her breath catch, her heart stutter, to make little bursts of electricity spark through her fingers, craving his touch, craving the feel of his skin against hers. He knows exactly what she wants to hear, and always says it like he fucking means it, like he's continually shocked, amazed by her. She wanted to be amazing once. For him. Now, well, now she’s not sure what she wants, not sure she wants anything at all.

“You like me sleep deprived and overworked?”

“No,” he tells her chuckling. “I like to see you fight for things you care about.”

“I hate it,” she admits. “I hate spending my days fighting losing battles.”

“So quit,” he says, shrugging, as though it's that easy. It is that easy, except it's not, not remotely that easy. Laurel’s discovered _that_ more times than she can count.

“I can't,” she admits before she can regret telling him, cracking the door to him and letting him see inside, see her life.

“Because I love it more.”

“Thought so,” he tells her. “I can see it in your eyes. You were always a sucker for tilting at windmills.”

Laurel rolls her eyes, trying hard, failing, not to grin. A lot of things have changed for her since he left, but that, that’s not one of them. “You’re gonna appreciate that even more in a month or two. When I figure out how to keep you out of jail.”

“I appreciate it now,” he says, and there’s that cocky grin again and goddamnit, Laurel thinks, stop, just stop.  Please.  If you loved me, ever, once, just stop.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, defo only just realized that I inadvertently titled my two fics "from the horizon down" and "up the wolves" and that was not deliberate at all. Promise if there's a third it's not gonna be called "turn left here" or something. Promise.  
> (I don't promise...) I actually have a draft I'm working on right now tentatively titled "no more after me" which is somewhat thematically similar...totally just gonna own this I guess

“You got bailed without too many issues?” she asks him, switching tactics, trying to change the subject, distract him, stop him from hitting so close to the still painful parts of her.

“Yeah,” he says, flashing her a smile that shows just a few too many teeth. “No problem there.”

“And your bail conditions? You talked to someone about them too?”

Frank nods. “Don't worry,” he assures her, giving her a look that borders on weary, borders on teasing, crooked little smile and rolled eyes that come just a second too slow. “I’m not gonna be an idiot and blow all your hard work.”

“You should be more concerned about winding up back in lockup,” she tells him wryly.

He shrugs, chuckles lowly. “Lockup I can handle, disappointing you, well, that's a tougher one to take.”

Oh, she thinks, _oh._ Her heart sounds loud in her chest till she can hear nothing else. How does he do it, she wonders, how can he say those things so casually, like they don't matter, like they don't mean a thing? How can he say them like he thinks they won't do this to her, like he doesn't _know_ they’ll do this to her, make her palms sweaty and her stomach drop? Does he really think she’s that far gone that his words don't register anymore? Well, she thinks wryly, she _does_ wish that were true.

“Tell me about it,” she tells him, voice edging to somewhere like a command. “Why you're in this mess. Tell me how I can fix it.”

He shrugs again, looks down at his hands, jaw tightening. “I don't know if you can.”

“Tell me why.”

“Cause I think I’m done running. I think it might be nice to be done with that, to just be still for a while.”

“And you can't be still outside of jail?” she challenges, eyes flashing. God, she thinks, this stubborn, stupid fucking man. Life _is_ fucking running she wants to tell him. Running from something, running to something; it's all the same, all running, all exhaustion and burning breath and shaking palms. Laurel’s been running since before she could walk. And she's smart enough to know she’ll be running until the day she dies. Why should Frank get to be any different. Why should Frank think he’s got any right to anything else. She wants to tell him that the moment you stop running you’re as good as dead, wants to know what this stupid, selfish, weak man thinks of that, thinks of that accusation. She thinks he’ll just take it, will just smile and shrug and accept it. Again, she thinks, this is not the man she knows, not the man she once thought she loved. She could never have loved this man, this lost, broken man, could never have loved a man so unwilling to fight. “What was that this morning then, when you wanted me to have your back, not to try for a plea?”

Frank frowns, and his hands go out to her, stretch halfway across the distance between them like begging. “Then you happened,” he tells her simply.

“You can't fight because of me?” she spits, angry now, angrier than she should be, though Laurel does what she’s always done, takes that anger and forces it down, down, strangles it, wrestles it off her face, out of her voice, until there is nothing that gives her rage away, nothing that shows in her eyes.

“Yeah,” he tells her, head tilting to the side as he watches her, like he’s waiting for some sign, some signal from her, judging how he should continue. “I don't know if I deserve to.”

She scoffs before she can really help herself. “Deserve has nothing to do with it,” she tells him. “You’re able to fight, so fight. I’m not going to forgive you any faster if you martyr yourself and fuck up my win percentage.”

He laughs, short and sharp like a bark. “You're something else.”

She shakes her head, sad now, suddenly. She’s had five years to go forward, Laurel thinks, five years of driving herself ever onward, away from that painful, awful past, like she’s racing from something, racing from the things that hurt her. And he’s spent five years clinging to that past, wishing he could somehow go back to it. Neither of them really got closure, she thinks, whatever _that_ means, but what they want from each other are two vastly different things. She thinks Frank still wants her to be that sharp, sweet girl he imagined himself having a better life with, being a better person with. And Laurel, well, Laurel doesn't know what she wants, but she knows it's not moving backwards, knows it's not making the same mistake again. “I’m _someone_ else,” she tells him. “I’m not the girl you needed to get your forgiveness from.”

He nods, exhales sharply. “I know.”

“I can save you from these charges Frank,” she tells him, forces herself to hold his gaze, keep her eyes trained on his blue ones, sad, defeated, weary. “If you let me. But I can't save _you_. I never could. You have to save yourself.”

He nods again and she hopes he understands, hopes he gets it. She thought he could save her once, keep her safe, sheltered from the lurking shadows of her past, the things that never leave her mind, from the things she still fears, even now. She thought Frank was strong enough, fierce enough, loved her enough to protect her, save her, make things better. But she was wrong and she was weak and she’s not so stupid now. When he left it took care of all those hopes, sent them spilling to the ground, tumbling on the wind like sand and it left her to pick up the pieces of the lies and the blind wishes and find something that was true, something that was real hidden among them. She had to save her damn self. And maybe she has and maybe she hasn’t, but she didn't pin her hopes and her fears on someone else, she got back to her feet and kept moving.

“So how do I do that?” he asks her, raising an eyebrow carefully and just like that, he’s back to the Frank she remembers, cocky, self-assured, teasing. Who is this man, she thinks, and what is he really thinking? She no longer knows, if she ever did.

She shakes her head shortly. “Trust me,” is all she tells him. “That's how you beat this.”

“How do I save myself?”

“How does anyone?” she counters, sighs. “Go home Frank. You’re exhausted and you’re stressed and you’re not gonna get any answers here. Not from me.”

“What am I gonna do at home?” he asks, and if she really stops to think about it, the questions doesn't sound rhetorical. It sounds like he really is asking her what he’s supposed to do, what his next step must be. Laurel has no answer, she cannot be responsible for this man, for guiding him.

“Go home, eat something, sleep. Act normal. Don't think about this, about the charges or jail or what comes next. Pretend this doesn't exist.”

“That what you tell all your people?” he asks like he doesn't really believe her, doesn't really think her advice is sound, like it will do him any good.

She nods. “It is. It's good advice.” 

She doesn't tell him that it's what she’s been doing since she was small, has been the only thing that's kept her on her feet, kept her from screaming, kept her from madness, probably been the only thing that's kept her out of jail herself. She would never confess this to any other client, will not confess this to Frank. He is the same as any other client, he means nothing more to her, just another client she needs to save. He deserves no special knowledge, not now, not when he remains a stranger to her, no matter what they were once. They are not now, _he_ is nothing now, nothing to her, just another man who needs her. And she will confess nothing to him, will show him no weakness, will not let him into her life again.

“And then what?”

“Then you wait for me to call,” she tells him. “And for me to fix this.”

“You sound like Annalise,” he says, looks guilty as he says it, eyes sliding away from her. She doesn't even detect the hint of a grin, the hint of a amusement in his voice. So, she thinks, things have not been resolved with Annalise, not where Frank’s concerned. She hasn’t seen Annalise in years, not since shortly before she graduated, hasn't talked to her in even longer. There was, Laurel thinks, nothing left to say.

And yet, somehow, she always thought that Frank would have come back to her, the prodigal son returning, would have found a way back to Annalise, to make right what he felt he had done.

She should've known it wasn't true, should've known that when he went he went for good. Laurel thinks too that Bonnie would've told her, had she known, wouldn’t've have allowed Laurel to remain in the dark, not where Frank was concerned. Bonnie knew, always, what lurked between Frank and her, accepted it even when she could see that the spark of flame was igniting a bomb, not building a fire.

And Bonnie, Laurel thinks suddenly, Bonnie deserves to know this, know that Frank is back, back in her life, that he’s safe and whole. Bonnie deserves to know because even now she loves Frank, misses him. Laurel knows she makes a poor substitute for who Bonnie really wants to drink with, laugh with, wants to share the details of her day with. But Laurel’s had to do, had to play Frank’s part for five years, and she thinks, maybe, Bonnie is finally starting to come around, starting to accept Laurel as more than just the closest thing she can get to having Frank as her sidekick, her comrade in arms again.

“I’m nothing like Annalise,” Laurel snaps before she can help herself. She bristles anytime the woman’s name is mentioned, anytime she’s asked about that terrible year. It's like pressing on a bruise, like ripping open a half-healed scab, painful and tender and still bloody. Annalise was supposed to be the best thing that happened to her, was supposed to open doors, lay the path out before her. It didn't ruin her, Laurel knows, not the way it did Wes and Conner and Asher, or even Michaela, but only because she had been ruined long before then, only because she already knew how bad things could get and fought, fought against it at every turn. But Annalise, Annalise took them all in, the five of them, took them in and held them close to her chest, close to her heart and slipped the knife into their backs while she whispered to them that she would protect them. Laurel saw that from the first, saw in Annalise the same shifting darkness she saw in her father, the same ruthless hunger, knew to be cautious, knew not to let her guard down too far, knew to try and use Annalise as she was being used in turn. And even still, it hadn't worked.

“No,” Frank agrees. “You're not. I think you’re something completely different.”

“You're right,” Laurel tells him, tries not to glare, tries to keep her voice steady, flat, tries not to let any emotion show in her face, her eyes, her voice. “Because I won't ruin your life while I get you free.”

“That a guarantee?” he asks with a crooked grin, like he knows he’s touched a nerve with her, like he now wants to smooth the simmering anger from the room. 

“No,” she tells him. “You’re not paying me, remember.”

He laughs. “Even so,” he says softly. “You’ve gone and thrown a monkey wrench into my life.”

“I have?” she raises her eyebrows skeptically. “I think a couple of felony charges probably did that first.”

“Charges I know how to handle,” he says, holding her gaze. “I never had an answer for you.”

He’s right, she admits, he was never something she had an answer for either, even as she knew him, understood him, he was never a question she could answer. Why Frank? Why him, why her, why _them_? Because. That's how Laurel would have to answer, even now. Because. Because he just is, because they just are. She long ago learned not to question the good things that may come into her life, learned simply to accept them, to appreciate them while they lasted because there were so few of them, so few pure things that came without strings, without qualification, without the taint of something rotten underneath. She never had an answer for him either, but she never really minded. Having him was enough.

But Frank’s watching her like she’s a puzzle he is on the verge of solving, like she’s a language he almost understands, a mystery he’s decrypting by touch and blind faith. Laurel thinks that maybe, once, they understood each other, but not anymore. Now they both hear only the echoes of what they once were, their signals distorted by time and expectation and the weight of an army of ghosts and memories and the lingering beginnings of what might have eventually been love.

“You don't need to solve me Frank,” she tells him. “That’s not how this is gonna work. Let me do my job, ok? And focus on not fucking things up worse.”

He laughs. “Because if I’m in your office I must've fucked up somehow, huh?”

“Not too many people wind up here because they want to be,” she points out.

“I would,” he tells her, grin slipping, going flat, going into something serious, something earnest. “If I’d’ve known you were here, well, I might’ve gotten pinched a long time ago.”

“Frank,” she begins, and her voice sounds thin and high to her ears, like begging. “Don't joke about that.”

“I’m not,” he says, forcing her eyes to meet his. “I wouldn't. But I, I missed you. So much. And I could never think of a reason to see you, think of something that wouldn't get a door slammed in my face. So I never tried to find you. I honestly never even thought you’d still be in Philly.”

“Where would I have gone?” she asks him. Because, once, Frank knew enough about her, about her family, about her past, to know that there was nowhere else for her to go. She was running just as much as he is now. She's still running, if she’s being honest with herself, still trying to keep her nightmares from reaching her. Even now with the biggest nightmare of them all dead.

“Anywhere,” he tells her. “Philly was nowhere special to you.”

And yeah, she thinks, that’s technically true. Philly wasn't anything to her, not when she first landed at Middleton. She could've gone anywhere; had thought about California briefly, and Chicago and Boston. Had said screw it, wound up in Philadelphia. But she hadn't had to stay, not after graduation; Frank’s right, she could've landed anywhere. Except leaving Philly seemed like surrender, like a defeat she wasn't ready to concede. If pressed, she couldn't say whether that was giving up on Frank, on what they had, or the fresh start she thought she was making with law school, couldn't say why she’d stayed when the rest of them; Wes and Michaela and Conner and Asher had gone as far away as they could, had run from the worst three years of their lives with all the speed they could manage.

But Laurel, well, she was never one to take the smart play, to give up when she thought there was still fight left in her, even when there was no chance of victory. So she stuck around, made a life for herself, tried to lessen the stain of all the things she’d done, of all the blood on her hands. But if Frank doesn't know that, doesn't see that, well, Laurel’s not going to explain it to him. He doesn't deserve that from her, not anymore.

“It wasn't,” is all she says instead. “But it is now.”

“I’m glad,” he tells her, smiling thinly. “I’m glad you found a place.”

My place was supposed to be with you, she wants to tell him. I’d found a place and it was with you. And then you left. But Laurel’s stubborn, and dogged and she won't give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he hurt her, how much she misses him, even now. He’s already confessed too much, she thinks, already ripped them both raw. He doesn't need that, not now, not when he has much greater things to worry about. And Laurel, well, she cannot afford to be made weak, not for this man, not for any man.

“Go home Frank,” she tells him, sighing. She can't have this conversation anymore. Not today. Maybe not ever. “Someone’ll call you about your next court date.”

He nods stiffly, grimaces. “Hurry up and wait, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Alright,” he says, standing, brushing his palms against the front of his jeans. “I’ll see you around Laurel.”

Laurel stands as well, before she can help herself, finds herself moving around her desk, going to Frank. “Don't be a stranger this time,” she tells him as she moves to stand a little distance from him, pulling the door open.

“I don't think the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is gonna let me,” he grins. “Even if I wanted to.”

Frank steps forward, too close, God, God, too close. Laurel tries not to breathe, tries not to move, tries not to see the way his pupils blow wide as he approaches, as his throat bobs as he swallows thickly. He sticks his hand out to her, crosses half the tiny distance between them.

Laurel takes it, takes his hand, large and rough and so, so tender, still. So goddamn familiar, every last cell in her body responding to his touch, craving it, even now. Something crackles between them, sparks and ignites. She knows it's not just her, hears the twin noises they both make, sharp little inhales like gasps, like sighs. His pupils are nothing but black now, and Laurel sees the tremble in his limbs, like he’s fighting hard against something. They both step forward, step closer until they’re only inches apart, like they’re drawn together by gravity, by inevitability. Years ago, Laurel thinks, being this close to Frank would lead to only one thing, to a tangle of limbs and skin and whispered moans. Now, well, now. Now she doesn't know.

They’re close enough Laurel feels the heat of his breath on her skin, feels it come heavy and fast like he’s been running, hard, feels it mix with her own, fanning against her cheek. She feels him moving forward, moving even closer, until she thinks there might not be any distance between them at all. Her heart is pounding in her chest, pounding like it wants to jump out of her skin, bury itself into Frank’s.

Her eyes flick to his lips, watch them part, watch his tongue dart out to wet them and she tries to stifle a sound that she knows will be closer to a moan than anything else. She partially succeeds, hears the strangled sound that slips past her lips, sees the way Frank reacts to it, sees the parting of his lips, sees the widening of his eyes, sees the way he tries to swallow her moan into his body. Oh, oh, oh, she tries to close her eyes, tries to ignore the hot burn of desire building beneath her skin, tries to fight the hunger of her flesh. Tries and fails. She can't help but lean forward until she doesn't know how they’re not already touching, wishes, wishes they were even as she wishes she could step back, step away, protect herself from the terrible decisions she knows she’s gladly going to make. 

She doesn't step back, feels the whisper of his lips against hers as Frank inches forward, feels the slide of his nose against hers, against her cheek, so soft, so slow. They’re breathing together, in tandem, like they're now one person, lips brushing together, soft, soft, but going no further, never truly meeting, as though neither of them is brave enough to take the final step, find out what happens if they were to give in to the things raging in their blood.

Yes, she thinks, yes, this is how it should be, this is where she belongs. The doubts, the fears, the racing of her mind stills, finally, finally and everything succumbs to silence and there is only Frank, only her, only this thing that neither of them can resist, can silence. His lips are like coming home, so, so familiar, and she doesn't know how she hasn’t forgotten them, except she knows she couldn't, couldn’t if she tried.

Her right hand is still held tightly in his, his fingers tripping against the skin of the back of her hand. She is hyper-aware of the places where their skin meets, the places where their bodies have given in to the craving of their bones. Laurel wants more than these two points of contact, wants every inch of her skin pressed against his, wants to never let him go.

His other hand finds its way to her neck then, thumb running against the soft column of her throat and Laurel feels herself stop breathing. She wants to bite his thumb until there’s blood in her mouth, wants to score lines down his back, across his shoulders, wants to mark his flesh until he’s hers, until she claims him, totally, completely.

But then Laurel steps back, finally summons the strength to fight against the flashing, rising hunger thrumming through her blood. She turns her head away, away from Frank’s gaze, away from the press of his lips, his skin.

He blinks at her, tries to steady his labored breaths, his hand reaching out to hers again, even as Laurel takes another step away.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, voice ragged, taking another shuddering breath, refusing to meet her eyes, letting them settle somewhere over her shoulder. “I shouldn't have done that.”

“No,” she agrees only once her voice is steady, controlled. “You shouldn't have.”

“It won't happen again,” he says, something working in his jaw and God, Laurel thinks, she should not let herself look at his face, his mouth, his eyes. It makes her weak, it makes her want him so badly she aches.

She nods. There's nothing else to say. They crave each other still, that much is clear, but it's not that easy, it's never been that easy. And she has a duty to him, an obligation to try and fix things, not screw them up more. And letting anything happen between them, as much as they both may want it, well, that’ll screw things up more than she can say.

“I’ll see you around then,” he tells her, reaches out, takes her hand even as she flinches back. The desire flares again, hotter, brighter than before and they both stiffen, hands tightening against each other, as they both gasp sharply, step closer again.  
Frank chuckles and Laurel feels her stomach tighten, feels her breath stutter, her lips part as she leans forward, seeking his out. Oh, she thinks, oh how she wants him. Oh how she shouldn't want him. Their lips meet, moving softly, so, so soft and so, so slow. His tongue slips into her mouth, slips past the last of her resistance and God, she practically sobs. She just wants to stop fighting, just wants to give into the things her body wants, smart or dumb or all of the above.

But she fights it again, fights herself and fights Frank and pulls away, retreats back into herself, practically panting with the effort. Frank looks shocked, looks stricken, reaches up and touches his lips, feels the moisture on them, the lingering evidence of her kiss.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. But he doesn't look sorry, not this time. He’s not grinning but there’s something in his eyes, something knowing, something defiant, they hold hers, unflinching, certain of something she can’t begin to guess at.

“Me too,” she tells him, thinks she’s apologizing for more than just an ill-conceived kiss, more than just the weakness of her flesh, the lingering affection she still feels for him. She’s apologizing for so much more.

He edges around her, edges towards the door, careful not to let their bodies touch, careful not to let them get too close, like he’s gunpowder and she’s a flame, like they’re two atoms fusing into one. He lingers in the door though, one hand on the door frame and Laurel fights with everything inside her not to tell him to stop, to come back. She let him go once, she thinks, she can do it again.

“It’d be easier,” he tells her just before he goes, his voice open and raw and she can't conceive of a universe in which he is not telling her the truth, much as she wishes he wasn't. “If I wasn’t still in love with you.”


	4. Chapter 4

She doesn't hear from him for six weeks, can’t think of an excuse to contact him herself, other than that she wants to. She goes through his case files, pours though them really, buries herself in them, but finds nothing that could be helpful. It seems open and shut, really, unless she can convince a jury that it was a pretty damn convincing frame job, or unless she can convince Frank to give someone up, take a deal. She doesn't bother contacting him because she knows how futile it will be.

She thinks about him though, nearly every day, presses on the dull ache in her chest until becomes a roar of pain. She doesn't let it effect anything, tells herself she cannot be that weak, powers on through her long days and longer nights, only lets herself think of him in the few idle moments she has, in those few last moments before falling asleep.

Her skin still burns with his touch, lips still sparking with the lingering ghosts of his, but it's a feeling she can ignore, overlook. She’s great at pretending things are fine. She jokes with her coworkers about Tony Montana the car thief, and they place bets on whether his parents will show up to the trial, joke about whether the name was accidental or his parents thought it was cool. They all agree, one night over a few too many drinks, that Laurel should try for a jury of nothing but twenty something men; between Laurel herself and Tony Montana they all decide she’s got a slam dunk if she can wrangle her way into a jury of boys who think they're men.

She doesn't tell anyone she knows him, doesn't let it slip that she still sometimes dreams of him. She doesn't even allow herself to bring him up, waits for the usual jokes and gossip to swing to Tony Montana, about how lucky Laurel is to have stumbled onto such a weird case. The PDs office has always been like that, full of dark gallows humor and Laurel’s always loved that about her job, that it's full of people who, like her, don't flinch from the hard battles, who face impossible odds every day and fight on, who laugh at what they can and cry at only what they must.

But sometimes, sometimes, she just needs to be alone. She’s sitting in her office again, late at night, long after everyone else has left, after the motion lights have long since gone dark. She should be at drinks, she knows, should be with her coworkers trying to forget the day. But instead she's sitting in her office, staring at her files, trying to figure out what the fuck she’s gonna do about Finch. Fucking Finch, she thinks, chewing hard at her thumbnail. Fucking Nadia Finch went home, went back to her kids and her row house and her vicious, violent piece of shit boyfriend, violated the fucking stay away order and now she’s got her goddamn bail revoked. And now she really can't see her fucking kids. And now Laurel’s uphill battle just became a fucking climb up Everest.

She needs to Finch out of jail, she thinks tiredly, she just can't figure out how, her brain feeling sluggish and drugged, like it's been packed tight. She just needs to figure out how to get her out. She needs her kids, Laurel thinks, she just needs her fucking kids to be safe. And instead she’s back in lockup. Laurel makes a note to visit her in the morning, drop by with some breakfast, maybe some coffee if she can convince the guards she’s not smuggling anything in. Finch needs to know it's alright, she thinks, needs to know that things are gonna get better and she’s not gonna be punished for just trying to defend, protect her kids. And that's not something Laurel can do, not anymore, not now that Finch has completely fucked up her bail conditions.

So she’ll make it as close to alright as she can, with breakfast and a familiar face and whatever she can do to get Finch home. She can't make it alright, but she can try to make it close, try to make things as normal as possible. She just doesn't know if it's gonna be enough for Finch, alone and back in jail and her kids stuck with her violent boyfriend.

Sometimes she wishes she had just gone into corporate law like her father wanted, wishes she’d taken the money and swallowed her pride and gone and done a bunch of shady semi-legal deals to make her rich father richer. And when he died she might’ve been able to take over, might’ve been able to get out, would’ve only had to put a year or so in with her father.

She lies and tells herself she could’ve survived that, survived that terrible year before death would’ve allowed her to escape her father again. She lies and tells herself she probably could’ve slept better, thinks she’s probably gonna have another long, terrible night where solutions slip from her fingers like water and she winds up falling asleep across her keyboard, waking up shaking and gasping.

And then he strolls in. Frank. Like he owns the fucking place and it's all Laurel can do not to tell him to get the fuck out. It's all she can do not to slip her lips against his jaw, thread her fingers through his hair.

“Who let you in?” she asks instead, blinking against the harsh light from the hallway at his back. She tries not to sound angry, tries not to sound startled, tries not to sound like she’s been waiting for him, desperate and wanting.

He shrugs. “Night cleaner. We went to high school together.”

“Gustavo went to high school with you?” she asks, eyebrows raised skeptically, voice cool. “Gustavo’s got about a decade on you. And he only left Panama in like ’98.”

Frank’s grin is more like a grimace, teeth bared. “Should've known you and the night cleaner’d be tight.”

“I’m here late a lot,” she says, feeling like she’s not admitting anything, knowing she is. “Gus and I talk baseball.”

“He told me the same thing,” Frank says, and this time his grin is wide, affectionate. God, she thinks, if he and Gus aren't already friends, they will be soon, Frank slipping into his life with his wide, easy grins, his self-assurance. She tries to tell herself to remember to tell Gus not to let any strangers in after hours, no matter how much they may know about her, about who they professes to be to her. She and Frank are nothing, she tells herself, and he has no right to be here, here or in her life at all.

“Why’re you here Frank?” she asks, her voice wearier than she intended, tired, exhausted really, strung so thin she can't hide it anymore.

“I wanted to see you,” he answers. And he says it so simply, so openly that it leaves Laurel gasping, leaves the weight on her chest tightening until she can barely think for it, until the edges of her vision go blurred, until all she can see is him. He cannot do that, cannot fucking do that, cannot talk to her like they’re anything more than strangers. It’s because she’s so unused to honesty, she lies, that's why he’s getting to her, and has nothing to do with how she just aches for him, like he’s a missing piece she’s only just found again.

“You wanted to see me?” she echoes, tries to keep her voice steady. “At eight o'clock on a Thursday?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs again, raises his eyebrows at her in expectation. He looks so, so cocky, so certain she will say yes to whatever he proposes, except she can see the way he waits with baited breath, sees the stiffness in his limbs, held taut and watchful. “Figured you’d still be around. You wanna grab a bite?”

“Frank,” she hisses, grips the armrests of her chair until her knuckles turn white, until her fingers spasm with pain. He can't just walk into her life like he never left, can't just come in and expect them to pick things up like nothing happened. It's not fair, she thinks, that he can do this to her, that he thinks he can walk back into her arms. “I have work to do.”

“I’ll bring back takeout,” he offers, giving her an open, inviting smile, the kind she used to roll her eyes at, the kind she used to love, crooked and smirking. “Get some for Gustavo too. Three of us can talk Phillies.”

“We talk AL East mostly,” Laurel says before she can help herself. “He’s a Yankees fan.”

“Going on what, six years here and you still like the Red Sox huh?” he asks, lopsided grin growing wider.

“You didn't come here to talk baseball,” she cuts him off before she lets herself relax, lets herself succumb to his quick, easy humor. God, she thinks, it would be so, so easy. And she wants it, more than she can say, she can feel the way her skin, her body calls to him, how she struggles not to get up, go to him, wrap her arms around his back, her legs around his hips.

“No,” he agrees. “I came here to have dinner with you.”

“I’m busy,” she tells him curtly. “Have dinner with Gus.”

“Give me thirty minutes,” he says, demands really, except there’s a tremble in his voice, a catch, and his jaw clenches the way it always did when he was nervous, like he feared getting slapped. “Thirty minutes to eat, to talk with me. Please.”

She sighs, rubs hard at her temples, scrubs a hand across her eyes. “Twenty.”

He smiles, blue eyes twinkling. “I’ll pick up Rosalie’s.”

“Don't,” she orders before she can help herself, before she realizes what she’s said, how desperate, how panicked her voice sounds. “Not there.”

His eyes widen slightly and when he speaks his voice is cautious, uncertain . “You loved Rosalie’s.”

She did, she did, when it was their place, when they used to go late at night after a long day working cases for Annalise, squeezing next to each other in the tight little booth, arms and legs and words tangling, tangling together as their lives tangled together. But it was his place first, and somehow she felt like she should leave it to him, to his ghost. She only went back once, after, and the food turned to ashes in her mouth. It wasn't the same without him, it was empty and cold and she sat in a booth that was too big, too cold for her eating too much food because she forgot and ordered for two. She felt like she was trespassing in a place she should no longer feel welcome in. She hasn't been back. “Not anymore.”

He nods, inhales sharply like he can sense her thoughts. “Ok, how bout Wok Out?”

“Yeah,” she tells him. “Alright.”

“Chicken and chili sauce and udon noodles?”

She nods, because she can't get past the fact that he's remembered her usual order. “Please.” 

It takes Laurel a moment, but it slowly sinks in how stilted this is, how wrong it seems. Once this wouldn't have been a transaction, wouldn't have been a negotiation. Once she would’ve ignored the world for more time with Frank. Now, she hopes with everything within her that Gustavo takes Frank up on his offer of food, joins them as a human shield, as a way to protect them both from whatever this is, this stunted, fragile thing that she knows, knows is going to break under the expectations they both carry, under the weight of their shared past and separate memories. She reaches into her desk, pulls out some cash, holds it out to him. She cannot let this be anything other than a transaction.

Frank scoffs, looks affronted, looks hurt. “It's my treat Laurel.”

She shakes her head. “That can't be how this works.”

He stiffens, sighs and holds out his hand to take the money. Their fingers brush, just briefly as he does and she watches his breath catch, feels the hiccup in her chest as her own breath stops, re-starts after a long, long beat. She knows he wants to touch her more, sees the way his body pitches forward, just slightly, like he wants to grasp her hand, draw it to him, draw her body to him, see the way his hand lingers in the space between them. But Laurel draws her own arm back quickly, wraps it around herself like armor, squares her shoulders against the things she wants more than anything.

“I’ll be back in a few,” he tells her, holding her eyes. “Please don't leave.”

She feels a grin slide onto her face before she can help it, feels her eyes roll in weary affection. “Don't worry,” she assures him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He goes and Laurel wishes she could flee, wishes she could move her limbs and leave the office, leave the state, go and never look back. But she can't, for more reasons than she can name, not all of them having to do with her caseload, with her clients.

Instead she turns back to her work, tries to think through her Finch problem, about getting her out again and fast, about convincing a judge not to require bail, because hell, Finch still can't pay it, tries not to think about the tingling in her fingers, the crackling energy like fear, like anticipation, the curling, pooling desire in her bones.

He’s back before she thinks she’s even blinked, holding up the bags of food with a slanted grin.

“Gustavo’s gonna join us later,” Frank says as he sinks into the chair across from her. They’re only separated by her desk, but it feels like miles, it feels like years, it feels like she’ll never reach him again. “He wanted to finish up the DA’s office first.”

“So just us then,” she says rhetorically, taking the takeout container that Frank offers her. She doesn't let herself touch him this time, grasps the underside of the bag to avoid taking the handles from Frank’s hands. If he notices he doesn't say anything, but their eyes meet and, if anything, it's worse, just makes her want to touch him more, an inch in her bones she just can't scratch. His eyes, warm, soft and so, so blue, draw her in. She doesn't know if she can be alone with him, doesn't know if she can resist the pull he exerts over her. She should not have agreed to dinner, she thinks, should not even have allowed him in her office at all. But she can't deny him anything, she tries, oh, she tries, but it gets her nowhere.

He nods, fishes his own container from the plastic bag, sniffing it idly before cracking it open. “I can't believe Wok Out’s still around.”

Laurel laughs around her chopsticks. “I like Wok Out.”

“I know,” he tells her. “But it's still best on a lot of booze.”

“It's best after dark,” she corrects. “It's best on bad decisions.”

He begins to laugh, stops himself short and eyes her with something like suspicion, something like wariness, like he doesn't quite know who or what she is, like the change was sudden, jarring, like he’s suddenly seeing something in her he had overlooked or ignored but which has now become clear. “That I think,” he tells her, slowly, voice so deep it's nearly a growl. “is definitely true.”

This, she thinks, is a bad decision. _Frank_ is a bad decision. Acting on anything she thinks she wants, anything her body, her mind tells her she wants right now is a bad decision. She should do the opposite of what every nerve in her body is screaming for her to do. Very deliberately she stands, careful to keep her hands tucked tight against her sides, and edges her way past Frank, to the open office door and the safety of the hallway outside.

“I need a drink,” she tells him, refusing to look at him as she passes by. “You want anything?”

“Sure,” he tells her, glancing up, glancing at her face and no, no, damnit, no, Laurel looks at him before she can stop herself.

There’s a flash of something on his face, a look he quickly buries behind his wounded cautious eyes, something like yearning as she passes him. It’s these looks, she thinks, these looks like she’s something to be idolized, something beautiful and terrifying and something he can't begin to understand but wants to, wants to study until he does. It makes her want to be that person.

But whoever he wants her to be, Laurel thinks, she can't be that person, not if he continues to look at her like that. It fucking terrifies her, makes her stomach drop and her hands shake, makes her want to run even faster, makes her want to beg him to stay. She wants to rip him open and see inside, pull apart his brain and his heart and peek inside, see what it is he sees in her, what he imagines when he looks at her. Because whatever it is; Frank doesn't see _her_. “Whatever you’re having.”

She nods, slips away. “Don't touch anything.” she calls over her shoulder, almost as an afterthought, except with Frank it isn't, it really really isn't. And the thing, the thing she really wants him to touch, well, she knows he can't, won't do that, not after last time. Touch me, she wants to beg him, I didn't mean it, touch me, please, I’ll die if you don't touch me. She feels like she’s on fire, feels a blush creeping up her body until she can barely think for it. Touch me, anywhere you want, everywhere you want, she almost tells him, I’m yours, I’ve always been yours.

She takes far longer than she should at the vending machine down the hall, pretends she’s studying each and every option before deciding, knowing already she’s getting a Diet Coke, knowing already she’s getting Frank a Dr. Pepper. She doesn't know what Gus likes, thinks she should get him something too, hopes desperately he really is going to join them for food.

She almost feels bad, using Gus like this, like a human shield, but he’s getting free dinner of out it, and, Laurel hopes, doesn't actually have to step in front of a bullet for her. She just needs him to keep her from doing anything stupid, keep her from sinking to her knees and tugging at Frank’s belt and whispering all the ways she missed him into his hip before taking him into her mouth. She just needs Gus to remind her of who she is, now, not who she was, to drag her back to herself when the memories, the wanting get too much.

Eventually she just gets Gus a Coke, figures she can't go wrong with that, hopes he’s finished up with the DA’s office so she doesn't have to face Frank alone. She's not sure that she can, not sure that she’s capable of thinking things through enough to walk away from him. She's tired and she's overworked and she's feeling like she’s been pulled ragged, she’s got no solutions in sight for Finch and she’s feeling fucking lost. Completely damn lost.

And she knows it’d be easy to let herself slip into old patterns, let herself slip into his arms. She’s feeling sorry for herself because she’s still stuck on her Finch problem and a solution isn't obvious and it's late and she's had another shitty day.

She just wants someone to remind her that she’s worth something, wants Frank to look at her like she’s the only thing he sees, to look at her not just like she’s beautiful, but like he wants to spend his life decoding her, understanding her. She wants him to look at her the way he used to, when she sometimes suspected he saw right through her. But she shakes off those thoughts, they can't get her anywhere, and tells herself she’s feeling self-pitying and wants someone to tell her they get it, that they know she’s trying her fucking best. Sometimes she thinks that's all she needs, just a damn pat on the head like a dog, for someone to just acknowledge that she’s struggling and to tell her, yeah, I see that.

She doesn't want a lifeline, certainly doesn't need saving like she’s some fucking princess and she’d insist she isn't drowning until the moment her head went under, she knows that much. But she’d like someone to get it, to look at her and see what she sees, she’d like not to feel so alone all the time. And Frank, well, Frank was the last damn time she didn't feel alone.


	5. Chapter 5

She tells herself she’ll go slowly back to her office, take the long way. She doesn't, doesn't even try to resist as her feet carry her back to her office, back to Frank. There’s a tether between them, she thinks, and it draws her to him like she’s a fucking fish on a line. There’s a hook sunk deep into her skin, deep into her bones and she’s never gonna get it out, not without ripping herself apart. She can't decide whether the effort would be worth it.

He’s leaned over her desk when she gets back, shirt stretched tight over the play of muscles in his back and for a long, long second that's all she can fucking think about, about how she wants to run her hands along the planes of his back. No, no, no.

She forces herself to look away, look past his body, to the files he’s idly flipping through.

“Frank,” she snaps and she feels her temper flaring. God, she thinks, she should not have fucking trusted him. She lets him in an inch and he blows the goddamn door open, makes her regret ever considering it. “Get the hell away from my desk.”

He doesn't even have the decency to look sheepish, to look like he’s been caught, just grins at her as he closes the file and steps back, leaning so, so casually against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.

“You can't fucking do that,” she tells him, voice sharp. “You know you can't do that.”

“I was curious,” he says, voice light and she wants to fucking scream.

“You know how important confidentiality is, you know how any breach could send me packing,” she forces the edge out of her voice, forces herself to calm, to think this through. She just forces herself to ignore everything other than the problem, like she always does. And she can only come up with one explanation. “Are you working for someone?”

“What?” Frank looks genuinely shocked, confused, thank god. Laurel doesn't know what she’d do if he was only coming back, only coming to her to try and get info about some case. She sees his eyes narrow, his arms cross more tightly over his chest, but she doesn't see any of the ticks she recognizes as his guilt.

“Are you working for someone?” she asks again, just to be sure. “Did someone send you here to dig anything up?”

“No,” he tells her, and there’s a soft plea in his voice that she almost believes. “I’m here cause I wanted to see you.”

“Why would you touch anything?” she asks him. “What the hell were you thinking?”

He shrugs, looks half contrite, frowning sharply. “I wanted to see what you were working on. Guess I forgot I’m not supposed to nose around. Old habits, you know.”

Laurel sighs and her eyes slip closed before she can help herself. She finds herself wanting to believe him even if she doesn't really. “Ok,” she says. “Just don't touch anything again. And forget anything you saw.”

He nods and steps forward, pushes back from the wall and goes to her. Frank takes the cans of soda from her hand, careful not to touch her. But he must feel it too, she thinks, the spark, the hook, whatever it is that hums between them, crackling like a live wire. He tries to resist it too, she can see it in the stubborn hard set of his jaw, the way his eyes stay locked on hers, the way he holds his body tight, controlled. It only works about half a second, until Frank sets the cans against her desk. And then he takes her elbow, draws Laurel towards his chest, until she’s pressed against him and God, God, she can’t let this happen. Not again, not again. She’s not strong enough.

She can feel his heartbeat thrumming against her chest, fast, stuttering, feels the shaking in his skin. And then his lips are against hers, crushing against hers before she knows what’s happened, soft and insistent and she feels her lips parting for him.

Stop, she tells herself, stop, stop, stop. Don't do this. Don't be so stupid, pull away and go back to your food and send him packing. Send him home. But she can’t, she can't and his lips are so familiar and his hands are large and warm and calloused and sliding against her hip and oh, oh, she can't, she can't.

He spins them around and she's suddenly pressed against her desk and she doesn’t want to, oh how she wants to, but she lets him lift her up against the desk and then his body is cradled between her hips and one hand is tugging against the hair at his temples, drawing him closer to her like she’s trying to steal his breath and the other is sliding against his chest, against his heart.

Frank gasps as she bites at his lower lip, tugs hard enough to make him hiss, make his hips stutter forward into hers, and she feels him pressing hard against her, feels the whine of desire building in her throat. She knows where this is going, she’s been here so many times before, and yet it's still terrifying, she still feels like she's perched, dizzyingly, against the edge of something, looking down into a series of horrible decisions she can't see the bottom of. What is it, she thinks, what is it about him and her and the pull they exert over each other, the fucking magnetism between them that makes it impossible to make anything that could be considered smart decisions. God, she thinks, God she just wants to be smart, be strong, but it's so much easier to be weak and to not think, not think about all the terrible, terrible choices she’s making.

He pulls a moan from her chest before she can stifle it, swallow it down, as he trips his fingers against her hipbones. He still, he still knows how to touch her, still knows how to play her body. He’s working his fingers against the buttons on her shirt and she moves her hands to stop him, winds up helping him instead, tangling with his fingers as they work together to rid her of her shirt.

“Fuck,” she hears him whisper as he pulls the edges of her shirt apart, his teeth scraping against her collarbone, the edges of her bra. “You're so fucking beautiful.”

She wants to laugh, she wants to cry. Instead she just gasps, moans as his tongue follows his teeth and there’s a deep jolt of desire that arcs through her bones, settles someplace low in her stomach. You, she wants to tell him, are nothing like I remember, everything like I remember; it feels like she’s dreaming, like her memories of Frank are being distorted by sleep, by her unconscious into something close to reality and yet not. His hands, his body, the feeling of them against her skin is the same, and different, his hands are rougher, less gentle and more desperate and she hopes, hopes that's a good thing, hopes he can still play her body like she’s a fucking instrument because she knows there’s no stopping this, no pulling back from the edge.

He’s rucking up her skirt and pulling down her tights and panties and as her hands go to the buckle of his belt Laurel suddenly thinks that this, this is a strange echo of the past, a strange echo of the first time they fucked, hard and gasping against Annalise’s porch. She wants to stop, stop the oncoming disaster, but then his thumb trips against her folds, slides through the wetness he finds there and she’s sighing into his mouth and she couldn't stop this if she tried. She can feel the pleasure building inside her with every stroke of his fingers against her clit, low and thrumming and she’s panting, gasping against the shell of his ear, feeling his body react to hers, the little shuddering groans, the tension in his limbs, pulled tight like a wire. Neither of them is in control of this, she thinks, neither of them have ever been in control of this.

She yanks hard at his belt then, tugs at his zipper and her hand is slipping under the waistband, into his jeans, his boxers and she’s taking him in her hand and he’s stuttering forward, hips bucking into hers and swelling in her palm and for the first time everything just makes sense again; this is not some new, strange Frank, it's just him and her. And she’d never admit it to anyone, that it took her hand against his cock to do it, but the two Frank’s, past and present, just merge in her mind and maybe it's just cause she tells herself to just stop fucking thinking. Because his thumb is brushing hard against her clit and the pleasure is building inside her and his other hand against her hipbone feels like he’s claiming her, marking her, feels like home and she thinks that maybe it makes her a shitty person, maybe it makes her an asshole, and it probably makes her a slut, but yeah, maybe fucking Frank is the only thing that makes any goddamn sense right now.

Except nothing makes any sense and she should stop this, stop this, should be thinking about how there’s nothing dignified about fucking him against her desk, about how she should at the very least be demanding he wear a fucking condom because yeah, she's on the pill, but that hardly solves anything and she doesn't know Frank anymore, he's barely more than a stranger she’s about to screw in her office on a rainy Thursday. But God, it's Frank, it's Frank and somehow she can't make herself speak, because she can't bring herself to stop this, to even delay it. Laurel knows that if she lets herself think, pauses to be smart she’ll never let herself get back to this point, and that can't happen, she can’t deny herself this.

So she pushes his pants down his hips and her hand against his shoulders scores deep lines down his back, urging him closer as she tugs, hard, at his earlobe with her teeth and he finally, finally gets the fucking message. He replaces her hand with his own on his cock and he positions himself at her entrance and God, God, she wants him so bad it's like a crushing weight against her chest, her body feels fucking empty without him, she’s fucking dripping and her walls are tightening in anticipation, grasping desperately at nothing as she waits for him to just fuck her. And then, and then, he thrusts forward and the groan that's torn from his chest, well, Laurel thinks she’s never heard any better sound in her life; she meets his lips and swallows the sound, takes it into her body as she takes the rest of him. He doesn't move for a moment, just stays inside her, deeply, perfectly, his blue eyes watching hers, waiting for something, some sign she doesn't know how to give him.

And then he begins moving, thrusting deep and quick, his hips snapping against hers and yes, yes, yes she thinks as her hands against his back urge him on, her own hips rising to meet his. His hand remains where their bodies join, stroking against her clit and she can't think for the building pleasure, can't think for how familiar the feeling of his body is. She tries to keep silent, she really really does, knows that Gus could be coming down the hall at any time, knows any of her coworkers could come in to get some last minute work done before the morning, knows she needs to keep silent.

But there are moans and gasps and cries tumbling from her mouth like a song, pulled from her lips with every stroke of Frank’s body against hers and she’s so, so close, the pleasure driving her on until she can barely think. His pace stutters, breath harsh against her mouth, her neck and she leans forward, kisses him sloppy and messy and their eyes meet and Frank whispers something against her lips, something she doesn't catch but his eyes are watching her like he can't look away, like he never wants to, like she’s the only thing in the world.

“Out?” he asks then urgently, breath ragged and Laurel doesn't ever think she’s heard him so desperate, heard such tension in his voice. She thinks, with what little brain power she still has functioning that he’s trying and failing to hold something, some nameless thing at bay, though she cannot begin to guess at what that is.

“No,” she insists, hand sliding down to the small of his back, pressing hard, desperately at his skin, drawing him closer to her, closer against her body because she cannot, cannot lose him again, not yet, not when she’s only just found him, not when she’s so close and it's all his fault. “Stay here, stay with me.”

And then he’s coming, spilling himself inside her with a gasp, a groan, another sloppy kiss against her neck.

And she’s so fucking close but goddamnit she’s not there yet and an angry growl that honestly sounds more like a whine, like a moan is torn from her throat because she needs to come, fucking needs it like air. But Frank is stilling, slipping out of her and she wants to fucking cry, wants to scream, wants to beg him to make her come.

He gives her a look, loose-limbed and sloppy and oh so satisfied and there’s a lopsided twist to his lips as he slides his hands against her thighs and sinks to his knees, holding her eyes like he’s waiting for some sign from her, waiting for her to beg him, to show him how desperate she is.

“Please,” she whispers as he brushes his beard against the thin skin of her inner thigh, nips softly there then lets his mouth go higher, hoping its enough, hoping he just touches her where she needs it. She won't beg him, God, she can't beg him, but she wants to, oh how she wants to. She can feel him smile against her and then he’s stroking his tongue against her center, against her clit, hard and fast and God, God, he always knew how to touch her, where to touch her to make her come undone. Whatever strange new creature he’s become in the last five years, he hasn't lost the ability to know exactly how to touch her.

He runs his teeth across her clit, nipping until she gasps, high and broken, and one hand comes up to thread into his hair, press him closer. Don't stop, she wants to tell him, don't you fucking stop. But he’s not stopping, shows no danger of it, devouring her like he can't get enough of her taste and she’d never admit it, never confess it to anyone, but that turns her on more than she can say, how much he always fucking loved to eat her out, how much he wanted her, God how it turned her on.

Her eyes slip open half a degree and she sees him watching her, his pupils still blown wide with desire but filled with something else, some nameless thing that her brain, clouded with want, can only describe as adoration, as worship. He grins again, wide, smirking, but doesn't slow the pace of his mouth, his tongue, like he can't get enough of her taste, like he wants to lap up every drop of her, and when she whines again, the sound goes low, throaty like a plea. Waves of pleasure are building low in her stomach, behind her eyes, flickering deep in her chest and rising, higher and higher with every stroke of his tongue. Laurel doesn't know how much she can take, doesn't know how much more want her body can contain, and then

Frank begins to move faster, letting his teeth stroke again against her but doesn't let his eyes leave hers, doesn't let himself look away, like he can’t tear his eyes away.

And then the coiling thing, the hard kernel of desire that started low in her gut, growing like a weed until she can feel it in her fingers, feel it in her brain, feel it take root in every part of her body, it breaks, snaps and it sends her over the edge and she’s rising, rising, rising and falling, faster than she thinks she can take, shattering and coming apart and crying out harsh and sharp, and she can do nothing but feel, keeping her hands threaded through his hair, stroking against his temples.

“I love you,” he whispers against her, mouth still against her, except he didn't, he didn't, that's not what he said. She refuses to believe that's what he said, except it was, it was and the only thing she can do is ignore it.

Laurel tugs at his hair, brings Frank back to his feet, back to her, places a sloppy kiss against his lips, tasting herself, tasting him on her tongue, then placing another against his temple, strokes her fingers through his hair and lets her breath steady, even out, slowly, slowly before she forces him away, forces him out of her life. Before she ends things.

“That shouldn't have happened,” she tells him coldly, sliding off the desk, sliding to her feet, turning away while she pulls her skirt down her hips. This is the only way, she tells herself, the only way because she’s certainly not going to be the one to stop this, not going to be able to recognize what a fucking disaster Frank and her are together. So he’ll have to, and she’ll have to make him. It's that fucking easy. He left once before, it’ll be easier for him to do it again than for her to, because, well, Laurel doesn't run.

She tries to ignore the hurt in his eyes, the way they narrow, the way the corners turn down and swing away from her and the way his jaw clenches, tight. She tries, she really does, but she can’t mistake the sadness in his gaze, can't pretend it's anything else.

“Don't do this again,” he tells her, voice soft and cracking. “Don't lie to yourself about what you want again.”

“I don't know what you’re talking about,” she snaps, hating that they’re having this conversation while she can still feel him inside her, while she still feels him sticky and warm and coating her thighs. She’s not doing a damn thing. She’s not doing anything other than being smart, being fucking logical and reading the writing on the wall. They can't do this again, cannot be so fucking stupid, much as they may want each other, their bodies crave each other, much as they both clearly want to make terrible decisions together. She's not just a law student anymore and he’s not just her maybe-coworker. No, she’s his fucking court appointed attorney and he’s a maybe-felon and they both have way too much to lose if they let themselves be stupid again. It doesn't fucking matter what she wants, because it's not that fucking easy, it never was. And she hates him, hates him for thinking it is, for thinking its that goddamn simple.

He sighs, eyes swinging away from her, over her shoulder. “You do,” he tells her. “You know exactly what you want.”

“Frank,” she pleads, because if he pushes anymore, pushes any harder, she’s going to crack, crumble into dust. She wants him so bad and she cannot fight the pull her has over her, not for long. “Not tonight. Please.”

He sighs again, reaches over to her desk and grabs a handful of napkins, hands them to her, watches as she cleans herself up as best she can. “Ok,” he tells her and his voice goes hard, almost angry. “Ok, Laurel. Not tonight.”

“Can we just go back to dinner? Start over?” she asks, because she doesn't think she can see him leave, doesn't think she can face having him turn away from her, but that, that, whatever that was against her desk, she can't face that either.

His face goes harder, his eyes angry and he glances away from her again, like he can't meet her gaze without screaming.

When he speaks his voice is colder than she thinks she’s ever heard it. “You’ve gotten your twenty minutes.”

She almost gasps, swallows the sound. “Frank…”

He shrugs, crosses his arms against his chest. “I don't know if I can. And I don't know what you want.”

I want you, she wants to tell him. That's all I know. Instead she just answers as best she can, as best she can without giving too much away, without exposing her throat to him. “I want to have dinner with you,” she tries for a shy, teasing grin, tries to squeeze through the cracks she can see in his armor. “I want to start from the beginning.”

The corner of his mouth quirks like he wants to smile but can't quite bring himself to do it, his arms remain crossed over his chest but something thaws in his eyes. He watches her a long, long moment and Laurel realizes she doesn't even breathe, waiting for him to speak. “Ok,” he tells her. “Alright.”

She wants to ask him what he wants, wants to know what it is he thinks he’s getting out of showing up to her office with food and sly smiles but she doesn't dare. She’s not sure she can face knowing; can face the full truth of what draws him to her, whether that’s simply the cravings of his body or something more, something real and terrifying and deep enough to drown them both. Instead she simply watches as he zips his jeans, buckles his belt and runs a hand through his beard, across his face, sighs heavily.

She goes around her desk, sinks into her chair, puts the desk between their bodies so she won't allow herself to do anything stupid. Stupider. Frank sinks into her guest chair, goes back to his container of food in silence, fumbling with the chopsticks in a way that used to make her heart swell and frustrate her in equal measures, that still causes the same little hiccup of affection behind her eyes. She feels like she’s a spectator in the movie of her own life, glances around the small office so she doesn't have to keep looking at Frank, keep thinking about Frank. She can't meet his eyes, she’s not strong enough to meet his eyes, looks at his hands instead, large and wide and worn and dotted with scars and so gentle, so tender, but that feels cowardly, feels like a betrayal, like an insult, so she swings her eyes back to his face, meets his somber blue gaze, careful not to let her pulse begin pounding heavy and wanting, loud enough she’s sure he hears. But that moment can't last, it's too much for her tonight, too much for her fragile, cowardly heart and she glances away again, hates herself for it. And before she can help herself a laugh is bursting out of her chest, loud and sharp and echoing through the silent room. He gives her a look, incredulous and confused, frowns around a mouthful of food, looking nothing so much as a small child who isn't sure he’s not being laughed at.

“All that,” she says vaguely, sweeping her hand to indicate the desk, the sex, still trying to stifle her laughter behind her other hand. “And we didn't spill anything.”

Frank chuckles slightly, mouth quirking to the side, the suspicion slipping from his eyes. “We did actually. You knocked my carton over. I got some sweet and sour on my leg, thought you noticed.”

She shrugs, tries not to look sheepish, guilty, tries not to be hurt that he had enough brain function to notice, when Laurel doesn't think she would've noticed if the walls had come crashing down on them.

He mirrors her shrug, tugs the container of food towards him again and continues shoveling noodles into his mouth. “Tried pulling my pants back on and found a stain I wasn't expecting. Surprised the damage wasn't worse though.”

She gestures to his jeans, spattered with stains of varying colors, varying ages. It tugs at something deep within her chest, something raw and aching and empty to see him in ragged jeans, ragged t-shirt that may have once been white. She doesn't know quite why she finds it so jarring to see him out of a suit; she’s seen him in jeans, in his boxers, in nothing at all, and yet, and yet, something twinges in her chest, it hurts, it hurts, because it feels like giving up, it feels like something innate has been stolen from him. “I’m surprised you can tell what's a fresh stain and what's not.”

He laughs shortly, glances down at his thighs. “Grease, oil, dirt; can't mistake any of them for sweet and sour sauce. Teriyaki maybe.”

Laurel hums around a mouthful of noodles. “Making poor Wok Out decisions,” she tells him, a teasing note edging into her voice because that's all she can do, try to make it hurt less.

“You’re right about Wok Out though,” he says after a long moment, scrubbing at a spot of sweet and sour sauce dotting the corner of his lip. Laurel wants to climb over the desk, press her lips, her tongue, her teeth against that spot. “It's definitely best on bad decisions.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, confession: I'm a trash person.  
> Not gonna say too much, cause I don't wanna give anything away yet, but def started a new fic and its tropey as hell in concept (like the literal tropiest) and then descends into another angstfest that tries to murder the tropes.  
> I think this might be my thing...sorry/not sorry. Also, maybe kinda pumped to see where it winds up...

He must see something in her face, in her expression because he gives her a sharp glance, leans back slightly in his chair to regard her. “You all but called this a bad decision,” he tells her, and there’s something too casual, too controlled in his voice.

“You don't get to be upset when I do too.”

“It's,” she begins, but her voice falters, gets swallowed underneath all the doubts and the thousand thoughts that suddenly flood her racing mind. “It's not that simple.”

“It's pretty damn simple from where I sit,” Frank tells her.

“It's not,” she says, angrier than she thinks she has any right to be. “It doesn't matter what I want, I’m your lawyer Frank. And you’re a stranger.”

He sighs, scrubs a hand across his face, frustrated. “You're doing what you always do.”

“What's that?” she challenges, an edge she hates creeping into her voice. “Thinking for half a goddamn second?”

“If that's what you wanna call it,” he says and there's something awful and mocking in his tone, makes her want to sink her fingers into his neck, tear his voice from his throat. He sits back in his chair, casual, too casual, crossing his arms over his chest again, smirks at her, though there’s something angry in his movements. 

“What do you call it?”

“Being a goddamn coward,” he tells her. “You don't even try, Laurel, you just run. When things get scary, or hard, you run away.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” she growls, voice low and deadly and God, she will not get angry, will not let him get her angry. She told herself she was no longer angry, no longer sad about what he did, about leaving her; told herself that she had moved past it, had accepted it. She thinks it's a good thing they’re separated by his desk because she’s not sure if they were any closer she wouldn't sink her pen, her chopsticks, anything into his eyes. She would fucking kill him. She hates him, she hates him, hates how much she cares about him, even now. She feels tears pricking at the back of her eyes, burning and angry and she blinks them away, refuses to let them fall, refuses to let him see. He does not deserve her tears, not anymore, if he ever did. “You’re one to talk about running you piece of shit coward.”

Frank looks like he’s going to get angry, to argue back, his mouth opens and his eyes blaze. And then he closes his mouth, and all the anger goes out of him, shoulders sagging. “I’m sorry,” he tells her and she cannot understand what has happened, she cannot understand where he’s put his anger because she’s still fucking furious, still wants to rake her nails across his cheek, wants to never see him again.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “For leaving, for running. I had to do it, I think you know I did. But I’m sorry I didn't tell you, take you with me. Or at least offer.”

She stares at him for what feels like an eternity, feels the anger, the longing churning in her gut. And then, the longer she stares at him, the longer her eyes meet his, that anger, that craving need fades to the background, fades in importance. It’s been five years and she spent them all being pissed, hating Frank and loving him in equal measure and now he’s back and it can’t be both. She has to choose, choose to forgive him or to hold tight to her hurt. There's no middle ground, and maybe it makes her weak and maybe it makes her foolish and pathetic and all the things her father’s voice in the back of her mind calls her when she’s at her lowest, but she’s gonna fucking forgive him, gonna choose to let it go, force herself to move forward so that they can move forward, together.

“I wouldn't have come with you,” she tells him. And yeah, she's a runner, she's a fucking runner when things get tough, always thinks she can outrun her problems, her demons if she just refuses to look back at them, pretends they’re long gone in her past, not nipping at her heels. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. But she’s smart too, she’s always been too damn smart for her own good, and she wouldn't have walked away from law school, from the life she was building away from her father, from the façade of a real fucking life, wouldn't have gone with Frank without a plan, a guarantee, much as she’d once loved him. 

And well, even if she had been willing to blow up the fragile life she’d been building for herself, the tentative plans she’d been making, left with Frank, she wouldn't have. Because at the time, God, she wouldn't have let Frank within spitting distance, wouldn't have let him even make the offer, because five years ago the horror of what he’d done, what she’d done, it was still fresh and it was still nauseating and the guilt was still clawing at her heart and churning in her gut and the beginnings or the endings of fear were still burning hot and fast in her blood and all she wanted to do was pretend none of it had happened and that maybe she wasn't as terrible a person as the things she did suggested.

Five years ago she couldn't have wrapped her mind around how Frank, the Frank he was with her, kind and gentle and steady, could be a man who strangled the life out of a girl on an empty rooftop, how the hands her used to hold her and touch her and set her body alight, how he could use the same fingers to play her body with a skill that was masterful and then wrap those same fingers around Lila Stangard’s windpipe. And now, well, now she knows that there are plenty of bad things done by good people, and plenty of good things done by bad people. And well, she knows too that not everyone is her father, that just as one good deed can't cancel out all the bad, one bad deed doesn't cancel out the good. She remains horrified by what he did, doesn't think she’ll ever really get over it, doesn’t think she should, but well, it may make her the master of self-delusion, the master of compartmentalization, but well, she thinks she can put it behind her in a way that was impossible when it was so fresh, when she was still fully submerged in the horror of Lila Stangard and Sam Keating and Rebecca Sutter and Emily Sinclair.

And had he asked five years ago, it would've been damn hard, but she’d’ve still been in the same position. And that, honestly, it makes all of the anger, all of the hard kernel of boiling rage and resentment, it makes it seem so fucking stupid, so useless.

She hates him for leaving her, but well, she would've let him go. She did let him go. And that makes her hate herself, so, so much. Because she should've gone with him, shouldn't’ve cared that he left. “I was so fucking angry at you. For Lila, for who I thought you were if you could do that to her. I didn't know the whole story then, and I wouldn't've come with you.”

He shrugs. “I know. But I still should've offered. You deserved that. The choice.”

She nods; he’s right. Yeah, she deserved a fucking choice, she deserved to be a part of the decision. He owed her that much if he had ever felt anything for her.

“So,” he shrugs, arms wide, like it's really that easy. “I’m sorry. The least you deserve is to know I’m sorry.”

“How does that help anything?”

“I dunno,” he tells her softly. “But I want you to know anyway. And I hope you can, I dunno, believe me I guess. That I really am sorry. I loved you and I thought I was doing right by you.”

“You didn't,” she hisses. “Because you didn't fucking think about me, what I might’ve wanted. You just thought you knew what was best.”

“You're right. I didn't, and I’m an asshole. But I hope you let me stay in your life anyway.”

“I’m sorry too,” she tells him finally, tries to keep her voice from shaking. She’s wanted to apologize since it happened, for whatever part she played in his flight, in the past five years of his life, running and hunted. “For putting you in the position where you had to run, had to make that choice. I didn't know.”

He nods. “I know. I know you had no idea what I was mixed up in. And that's on me too. Because I told you to trust me and then I never let you, never gave you any reason to.”

She says nothing, she can't, words don't exist for the things she wants to say, but she hopes he takes her silence for what it is; agreement, apology. He must, he holds her gaze for what seems like hours, watching her, judging her, before finally nodding to himself, going back to his food.

“What’ve you been doing for work?” she asks then, because there’s nothing left to say. They both fucked up and here they are, five years later, trying to take it all back. They can't take anything back, they just have to try and move forward, try to smooth over the cracks that have been left. 

“You didn't hear?” he asks, and if she didn't know better, Laurel’d say he looked positively fucking gleeful, like he’s only barely containing his desire to tell her a great, great joke. She knows he can't go back to the autoshop, not now that it's been exposed as a chop shop as part of his crimes. But his grin is crooked and feral and so, so pleased and Laurel imagines all the things her hands can do to make that grin falter. “Bonnie hired me.”

“Bonnie?” Laurel gasps out, because well, she should be hearing this shit from _Bonnie._ She was the one who fucking told Bonnie that Frank was back to begin with, the only person she told, feels she’s owed it that Bonnie tells her she hired the man in her little solo firm. Annalise would’ve told her, Laurel thinks, much as she hates to credit the woman with anything, Annalise would’ve told her, even if it was just to gloat about it. Bonnie, who eventually left Annalise for reasons Laurel still pretends she's unsure of, should’ve shown her the same damn courtesy.

“Yeah,” Frank tells her still grinning. “She said you’d be pissed about it, but that it was tough shit.”

“Why didn't you hire her for your case?” Laurel asks because she’s not going to start a fight about what Bonnie owes each of them, what strange loyalty will win out.

Frank’s brows furrow. “Why would I do that?”

She shrugs, trying to ease the ever-present hurt from her shoulders before she speaks. “Because she’s not a PD.”

“She’s also not you,” and the way he says it, so simply, so honestly, like he has a faith in her usually only reserved for the divine, like the simple fact that she’s Laurel, whoever that is to him, is enough, well it almost makes the lingering pain fade, the lingering chip she always has on her shoulder about her job. She fucking loves what she does, but she gets it; she’s been given a burden, a caseload, that three private attorneys would be hard pressed to handle, has none of the resources, experts and investigators that they would have, and makes a fraction of the money. She gets why she’s a joke to anyone fortunate enough to not need her.

“She offered though right?” Laurel asks, because she can't not know. “Told you not to tell me.”

Frank grins, teasing. “Yeah. She did.”

“Tell her to stop poaching my clients,” Laurel says, feeling herself grin despite every intention of sounding firm, at least pretending to sound affronted. She’d’ve made the same offer if she’d been in Bonnie’s place. Getting stuck with Laurel, well, she does her best and she does a damn good job of it with the nothing she has, but Laurel knows, if she ever got arrested, she’d try to avoid the PDs if she could much as she loves her coworkers.

“She said you’d say that too,” he tells her, a laugh teasing at the edges of his voice. He goes serious then, eyes softening until they seem like the whisper of his breath against her cheek late at night. “I’m glad you have each other. You’re good for each other.”

And Laurel thinks, yeah, yeah, he's right. It wasn't just Frank, his absence, the empty space he left in both their lives that drew them together, tightly, after he left. It was that she and Bonnie were too similar to not be tied together, to not let themselves be drawn closer when all the blood and fear of that horrible year passed and they could finally breathe again. 

The two of them were, _are_ cautious, quiet, observant, out of necessity more than anything else, and filled with a quietly boiling rage they slowly learned to recognize in the other, a depthless grief that they each still pretend they don't. They don't talk about the horrible things they carry with them like scars, like heavy, dragging weights around their ankles, but being with someone who recognizes them, who gets it without being told, well, Laurel thinks that's done both of them more good than they can say.

Because Bonnie got it when Laurel showed up at 10:00 a.m. on a snowy Sunday, a half full bottle of tequila clutched in her fist, already reeking of alcohol, her throat burning and her eyes dry and her whole body numb, numb, numb after her oldest brother called her to tell her that the thing she’d spent hours, _days_ praying for as a child had finally reached the ears of a deity she no longer really believed in and which had solved precisely none of her problems.

‘My dad’s dead,’ she had told Bonnie, or thought she told Bonnie, or maybe she said nothing at all, and Bonnie had looked at her with a softening in her gaze that Laurel almost had the strength to hate and swung wide the door and told her that she better not have driven over and had let Laurel sit, silent and shaking on her couch for more hours than Laurel can ever count, until the tequila dwindled to nothing and she somehow, somewhere, found the strength to call her mother and tell her she wasn't coming down for the funeral and if, by some fluke or oversight, she was left anything in the will, Laurel wanted it donated to a crime victims compensation fund; she didn't care where, or how, she just wanted some final, useless act of revenge against her father. Not even that had helped and Bonnie had known that too.

And she got it, wished she didn't, but she got it when Bonnie shut herself up in her apartment for three days, refused to pick up her phone and pushed her couch in front of the door so that Laurel had to break in through the fire escape, holding her breath that she’d find Bonnie alive and still breathing because Bonnie’s father was up for parole and the board had asked to hear from her, asked for a victim impact statement. And Laurel had crept in, found the other woman curled into a ball in the back of her closet, knees tight against her chest and she’d eased herself down beside her and sat there, slumped beside Bonnie for half the night, not speaking, not moving, not letting herself touch the other woman until Bonnie’d finally looked up, eyes red and hollow, and she’d pressed her arm against Laurel’s, eased herself against Laurel’s body, let her head rest against Laurel’s shoulder while Laurel pretended that she didn't hear Bonnie’s sobs, didn't feel the hot tears against her skin.

“I’m glad you and Bonnie found each other again,” Laurel says when she can speak around the hard lump of something creeping into her throat that tastes like her grief, that tastes like blood and the thin skin on the back of her knuckles. “Even if she’s trying to poach you.”

“She’s doing good, right?” Frank asks, a cautious note sounding in his voice. “She looks good, but with Bonnie…”

Laurel almost smiles, at the protectiveness she hears in his words, but then she remembers that for five years, Frank didn't give a shit, didn't care enough to find out if Bonnie was anywhere near ok, that he left it up to her to learn when Bonnie was alright, when she wasn’t, when the demons overwhelmed and surrounded her, choked her. “With Bonnie you never can tell,” she finishes for him.

He nods. “You were easier,” he tells her, licks his lips and her stomach flips, clenches and she wants to press her lips against his, sink her teeth into his tongue. “Always. I always knew when you weren't ok.”

She doesn't challenge him on that, much as her dignity tells her she should, because it was true. No one else could ever tell, but Frank, Frank somehow always knew, like he had the key to a code she didn't know was written in her bones. “Bonnie’s ok,” she assures him because she will not touch his words, doesn't think she can take it if she does. “Once she left Annalise things got better for her.”

Frank hums. “She was pretty silent about that,” he says. “Which means it got pretty bad.”

Laurel frowns, pauses for a long moment before she speaks. “I think that's for Bonnie to say,” she tells him. “Not me.”

He nods. “That bad huh?” he asks, matching her deep frown. He watches her eyes, watches her body and the way she refuses to give anything away on her face. “Why didn't the three of us ever hang out together?”

Laurel chuckles, rolls her eyes at him. “Because that's a threesome I don't think I’m ever gonna be ready for.”

Frank smirks. “God,” he groans. “Me either. I love Bon, but man, that’d be like sleeping with my sister.”

“That's not something you're into?” she jokes, watching as he swallows thickly, coughs into his hand as he chokes on his laugh.

“Let's try just drinking together first,” he tells her.

She smiles, and for the first time she thinks there is nothing angry, nothing dark and bitter and creeping behind her eyes, behind her heart. “I can do that,” she tells him finally, hoping, hoping that he really means it.

She wonders how it's suddenly become easy, light between them, wonders how all the tension, the lingering resentment has gone out of their bodies and they’re, for a few short moments, just two people talking without all the ghosts of their past crowding round them in the darkness. She wonders too why they never drank together, just the three of them. Him and her and Bonnie. Frank was friends with Bonnie, Frank loved her. She was, _is_ friends with Bonnie and yes, yes, she loved Frank.

But somehow they always kept themselves separate, their relationships separate, somehow they never spent any time together, the three of them. She wonders why, can't think of a reason other than that during those long months together Laurel isn't sure she was ever thinking straight, ever thinking beyond surviving from one moment to the next; the only time she was able to silence the panicked racing of her thoughts was in Frank’s arms, probably didn't even manage to think that they could be normal, could build a life out of the screams and smoke of that abysmal year.

It's easier though, so much easier for them to talk of Bonnie, to not talk about themselves but the things that tie them together, the things they have in common. Bonnie. The city. Wok Out. They don't want to talk about themselves, can’t bear to press on the still open wounds, and their steps are tentative, like they’re walking through a minefield, the ground threatening to erupt beneath them at any wrong step. But Bonnie, she’s safe and they both love her, there are no lurking dangers when they speak of her. So they can and its easy and Laurel thinks that perhaps, if they ignore too much, just enough, they can pretend that things lie easy between them, can pretend like the things that crackle between them are not equal parts hate and love.

“I’m glad,” he tells her and his smile is tentative, emerging like sun from behind a cloud. “When all this is over and done, the three of us’ll go out and celebrate.”

Laurel nods. “I think I'd like that.”

“Hell,” Frank says, grin spreading wider now that he sees she’s agreeable. “If you get me outta this jam, I’ll buy you some of that expensive whiskey you were always trying to get me to open.”

She frowns, shakes her head, teeth driving hard into her lower lip. “Don't bother. After you left I drank everything in your place. $200 bottle of whiskey included.”

He just shrugs. “Better you than anyone else. If I’d’ve died rather than…rather than what I did, I’d’ve wanted everything to go to you anyway.”

“Yeah?”

“Course,” he tells her. “You're my girl. You'll always be my girl.”

“I’m not your girl,” Laurel says, more vehemently than she’d intended.

“Hey, hey,” he says, voice going low and soothing. “I didn't mean anything by it. Just, I’m glad it was you who got my stuff, that it wasn't Bon or the super or anything.”

“I sold everything,” she says harshly, still smarting. She’s not fucking _anyone’s,_ she’s her own damn person and she’s proven she’s strong enough to handle anything on her own, proved it again and again since she was a fucking child, and Frank knows none of it, knows nothing of what she’s gone through to get herself where she is now. And the thing is, the thing she hates most, the thing that makes her grit her teeth and try to pretend it's not true, is that once she was his, once she probably would have given anything to be his, to stay his. And she hates that, hates that she was ever that weak, that taken by his sly smiles and his wicked tongue and the way he said her name, said he loved her. She will never be that weak again, easy as it would be. Because she doesn't know if she can ever fully trust him again, ever let herself believe that he won't up and leave her again when things get tough, when the bad things catch up to him again.

The fact that he's back in her life at all, that he’s showed up on her caseload and in her office and in handcuffs, well, she knows that means plenty of bad things still linger in his life. And yet, and yet, she doesn’t care, she wants him anyway.

“I sold all your shit and used it to buy more booze.”

He grins, so wide his eye teeth show. “Really?”

She nods, because well, it's truer than not. She sold everything she could, everything she could bear to get rid of, and that was most of it, really. She’d only kept a couple of his shirts, some of his books, the ones that looked worn and loved and that had his spiky scrawl tripping over the margins, and a handful of classic records she had intended on sending to her middle brother but still has in a box in her closet because she couldn't bear to part with them. “Really fucking expensive liquor and a vibrator.”

Frank laughs loud, throwing his head back and Laurel wants to sink her teeth into his exposed throat, wants to run her lips across his Adam's apple. She just wants, still, the ache in her running high and desperate, threatening to burn her alive, _consume_ her. “With the money you shoulda got for my stuff I hope it was some damn good liquor.”

She matches his grin. “It was. Vibe too.”

He laughs, but something catches low in his throat, a husky, teasing chuckle that sends a burst of desire shooting through her veins as his eyes darken and pupils widen. “Do you think of me when you use it?”

“Never,” she tells him, her voice steady, meeting his gaze so that he won't detect the lie in her.

His eyes widen, nostrils flaring and Laurel watches him swallow thickly, lick his lips. “Liar.”

“You thinking about me and a vibe?” she asks, small smile flicking onto her mouth.

He nods, looks practically incapable of speech.

“Say it Frank,” she commands.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “I am.”

“Too bad,” she lies, grin slipping wider as it goes feral, basking in the feeling of victory, of catching him flat footed, catching the need on his face, the naked, undisguised want. “That you’re never gonna be better than it.”

Frank looks shocked for half a second, blinks in surprise before he lets out a strangled little laugh. “Yeah?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow in that way that makes Laurel’s breath catch, makes her reconsider her words, makes her want to come around the desk and sink to her knees in front of him, beg him to touch her, make her feel, do something about the low hum of desire singing in her bones. “That a challenge?”


	7. Chapter 7

Frank takes it as a challenge of course; he can’t not. He shows up on her doorstep so late Friday it’s Saturday, smug little grin on his face and a bottle of half-decent whiskey in his fist. And Laurel lets him in, into her apartment and into her life and into her bed, tells herself that it doesn't mean anything. She doesn't even bother asking him how he found out where she lived, just steps aside and slides her hand across his chest and into his hair and grins against his lips and lets him walk her back until they collide, shocking and painful, with her couch. And then he’s sinking to his knees and oh, oh, _yes;_ Frank’s slipping her pants down her hips and chuckling low against her center and she thinks, with what little brain power isn't being consumed, overloaded, short-circuited by pleasure, by feeling, that God, God she’s glad Frank Delfino could never turn down a challenge, a dare, could never resist _her._

And then the next day, when she wakes to heavy sunlight and the feather-light brush of hands and whiskers and lips against the stretch of her shoulder blades, so familiar and so new, and she opens her eyes to a deep blue gaze she thinks must still be the lingering effects of a dream, she can't quite summon the strength to tell him to leave, to go home, can’t quite harden her heart enough to do what needs to be done, not quite yet. So she lets him stay, in her bed, in her heart, in her life, through a brunch that is made awkward only by the moment when they have to decide whether to keep fucking, _hard, desperate,_ against the counter, or to tend to the rapidly burning pancakes, through the slow Saturday afternoon spent with Frank idly pretending to watch terrible movies until Laurel settles herself between his legs and slides her tongue against the underside of his cock, and through another night where she’s only half certain she’s not dreaming, where Frank curls his body around hers with a desperation, a craving that she can't quite acknowledge, can only look at out of the corner of her eye, like looking at a too-bright sun.

And then he comes back, on Monday night, Wednesday too, though if Laurel’d had to put money on him returning even once, she would’ve bet against it, and when he does she lets him in and they settle into something like a rhythm and she lets herself believe that maybe, maybe this thing, whatever it is, is sustainable, that maybe they’ve found each other again, that maybe things won't end in inevitable disaster this time.

It's easier said than done, of course. Laurel knows it, knew that they were both taking a risk, taking a leap of faith. They’re both closed off, both too used to relying only on themselves for things to go smoothly, for them to just lay down their burdens, their _arms_ and fully trust anyone. But well, she lets herself think that maybe they’ll try, both of them, promised they’d try in those hazy early morning whispers and gasps.

Except when one of Laurel’s coworkers stumbles into her office one Tuesday morning she seriously considers throwing up her hands and saying screw it. Because she’s not sure that Frank can hold up his end of the bargain, not sure he’s worth the effort, worth her faith.

“Hey,” Neal says, leaning against her door jam, only his head peeking into the office. “You represent Nadia Finch yeah?”

Laurel nods, glances up briefly from her computer. Neal came onboard at the PD’s a year after her, went to Temple and is one of those impossibly naïve crusaders for truth and justice that Laurel once thought she was. He’s a believer in the system; in everyone, no matter their crime, no matter their income, getting a fair shot. Laurel hates him for his faith, hates that he doesn't realize the trick, the lie, that it's income and race and crime and the jury and the judge and their multitude of illogical biases and then the PD assigned to a case and _their_ quirks and it's a thousand things designed to fuck a person, designed to land them in jail, that prevent truth and justice, whatever the fuck that means, from getting anywhere near a goddamn courtroom.

And Neal, Neal can't fix all those thousand things, especially if he fails to see them, fails to understand they matter just as much as the truth. Laurel can't either, but at least she realizes they’re there, realizes the traps waiting for her clients. It helps that she’s Latina, Laurel’s always supposed; helps that when she tells clients her name they can let themselves believe she understands, understands the thousand ways society has already found them guilty. Because Laurel knows, has known since she was a child, that she may look about as close to Anglo as a Mexican girl can, she may have had all the things her father’s dirty money could buy, but at the end of the day, as soon as a cop or a judge or a jury heard her last name, heard her speak Spanish, learned where she was born, where her parents were born, well, that was about as far as her looks, her smarts, her father could get her. Approximately fucking nowhere. But Neal, charming, hopeful Neal McKinnon understands none of that, thinks that as long as he fights, and fights hard, the rest will fall into place. Sometimes she wants to scream at him until her voice is raw and bloody, wants to force his eyes open until he sees, but instead she just sighs, like always, runs a hand through her hair to push it away from her face.

“Nadia Finch,” she repeats after a long moment. “She's back in lockup. Couldn't stay away from her shitty boyfriend.”

Neal pauses, purses his lips. “That shitty boyfriend,” he tells her finally. “My new client.”

Laurel straightens, turns her attention more fully to Neal. He may be naïve, but he’s smarter than he looks at least, with his long, shaggy hair and his skinny ties, smart enough to bring this to her attention. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Picked up on a traffic stop. Couple keys of coke in his trunk,” he grimaces, shakes his head. “Lucky us.”

“You shouldn't be telling me this.”

Neal shrugs. “What’re you gonna do with that information? Just cause he’s a dealer doesn't mean she didn't tell him she’d cut off his balls.”

Laurel laughs before she can help herself. “Fair point. But why’d you tell me anyway?”

“Because we have to be allies for the moment,” he tells her, leans even more heavily against the door, arms crossing over his chest and Laurel is reminded, once again, of Frank, something tugging tight in her chest, yearning now, wanting.

But Laurel turns her focus from Frank, back to the present, back to her job. Allies, she thinks, they shouldn't be allies, not on this. Not on anything. Except. “Their kids,” she breathes. “Oh god, their kids.”

Neal nods. “Department of Human Services is already involved. I just met with Gio, he says he can't think of any relatives that’ll take them. There’s only a sister; she has like three kids of her own, can’t afford to take on four more.”

“No one else?” Laurel asks. “Grandma? Some cousins or something?”

“Not according to my guy,” Neal says frowning hard. “Check with yours, but I think we’re gonna have to work together to get one of them out.”

“Mine _was_ out,” Laurel growls, still feeling the lingering bitterness at Finch getting thrown back inside. “And she fucking blew it.”

“And mine has priors,” Neal admits and they both frown, stare at each other for what feels like hours. It's moments like this that Laurel hates, make her hate her job, her life, everything. When a laundry list of bad decisions, bad luck combine to put her clients in a terrible, impossible position that she can't get them out of. She fucking hates it. “His bail’s gonna be more than he’s got.”

“Well,” she tells him slowly, leaning back in her chair, watching Neal, assessing whether he’ll go for what she suggests, whether he’ll even be willing to take it on to his client. It'll benefit her client a lot more than it will his, may even let Finch get the hell out from under the boyfriend’s thumb, get her kids and get gone, off to Baltimore, Pittsburgh, somewhere. “If your guy puts up bail for mine, she can get out, go back to the kids. He doesn't have to walk back the charges if he doesn't want to, he just has to get her ass out on bail so the kids don't wind up in foster care.”

Neal nods, sighs and rubs his hand across his face. “I’ll see what I can do. Guy really loves his kids, even if he is a shitbag.”

“Let's hope,” Laurel says with a shrug, trying hard not to roll her eyes. “Everything I’ve seen suggests he’s an unmitigated asshole. He broke her jaw, you know. Collarbone too.”

“Doesn't mean he doesn't love his kids.”

“I know,” she tells him. God, does she know. She knows better than Neal, better than anyone. Her dad loved her, her siblings, he did, she’s always known that. It just didn't mean he wasn't a monster, wasn't a shitty, terrible person and she would've been better off with literally any other father, without a father at all. She joked once, back in college probably, when she was just a little too drunk, a little too willing to get herself close to the truth, to be honest about her family, that she could pick anyone out of the phone book and they’d have been a better father. It's been close to ten years and well, she still thinks she was more right than she knows. “We really shouldn't be doing this though.”

“What?” Neal asks sharply, glancing at her like he thinks Laurel will balk, will somehow ruin the only chance they have of keeping the kids from foster care, from being split up for months.

“You know what,” Laurel tells him pointedly. She’ll do whatever’s needed for Finch, for the kids her client is completely devoted to. But Neal, this is an unexpected position for Neal to stake; going in with Laurel on something vaguely unethical, something that acknowledges that the system is not always perfect and doesn't always know best and these kids, Nadia’s kids, shouldn't get put in the fucking system.

“Yes we should,” Neal says, rubbing the back of his head as though he feels a twinge of guilt, of regret that he’s doing anything not completely above board, working together with Laurel to benefit the kids not the clients. “It's the right thing to do Laurel.”

She nods. “It is. And I’ll shut up if you do too.” 

“I’ll see what I can do,” Neal says with a sigh, a little nod. “But if I fail, you need to think of something, ok Castillo?”

Laurel grins, tries not to let it look like a scowl. “I’ll take those kids in myself if I have to.”

“You and four kids?” he grins wide and teasing and Laurel can’t help but wonder why she and Neal aren't allies more often.

They make a good team when they have to, even if he makes her want to scream. He tries, he fights, and sometimes that's enough. “I’m tempted to recommend my guy says no just to see that.”

“Hey,” she tells him. “I have like six nieces and nephews. I can handle kids.”

She does fail to mention that three of those kids she’s met only once and the other three she hasn't met at all, but well, Neal doesn't need to know that, doesn't need to know the full extent of her alienation from her family, the full extent of how much she cannot stand her family. And she babysat a time or two in high school, mostly to get out of the hellscape that was her house, so really, how hard could it be. And plus, no one’s giving her kids, no way, no how. She can barely keep herself alive and she’s pretty sure everyone can read it in her face.

“Good,” Neal says, giving her one of those soft, small smiles that makes her think about all the reasons they really shouldn't be friends, all the ways she will ruin him. “I’ll speak with Gio, do what I can to get your client sprung. And you, you go speak with DHS; keep those kids out of placement.”

Laurel nods. “I know the solicitor over there, I’ll pull what strings I can.”

“You and your strings,” he says with another grin, like he can't quite believe Laurel, can’t quite believe the things she does sometimes, for her clients, for her cases, to get the results she knows she needs.

“Me and my strings are gonna keep those kids from getting placed,” she says. “They’re supposed to have a dependency hearing within like three days; I’m gonna have them kick back the paperwork, try to delay it those full three days. Maybe if we’re lucky they’ll forget about it and sit on it till the weekend.”

“You're something else,” Neal tells her and laughs, because he doesn't quite believe her, believe she will, but God, to Laurel it feels like an insult, like condemnation, like a punch to the gut.

“I’m what I need to be,” she says softly, with less conviction than she’d intended. Sometimes she hates what she has to be, what she forces herself to be, hates that Neal can see it in her, like a shadow, but doesn't understand, not really.

“Let's hope we both are,” he tells her, knocking once on the wood door frame as he goes and Laurel hopes he catches the smile she flashes him as he goes, hopes he catches it but not the way the smile never quite reaches her eyes.

Because it's only after he goes that she can let the nagging flash of something in the back of her mind take form, turn it over in her mind so she can examine it from every angle, truly examine it and uncover the truth. It's too convenient, too fucking coincidental and she’s not a fucking idiot, she’s seen this play before, seen it before from Frank when he needs to solve a problem. She saw it with Eggs 911, no, _no,_ he had a name. She saw it with Levi Wescott, a couple Ziplocks full of meth and a decade upstate and problem solved, simple as that. She just didn't expect it from Frank, not this time, because she was stupid and naïve and trusting and thought that he meant it when he said he would trust her. But he doesn't, he can't. And he’s fucked everything up.

She knows it was him, knows it in her bones, like certainty. Ten days ago he was looking through her files, must've seen Finch’s, seen enough to know the bind she was in. And so he did what Frank always does, fixes things for the people he loves, no, _no_ , for the people he’s loyal to. Fixes things whatever way he can. And so he stuck some bricks of cocaine in Gio Echeverria’s car, called in a tip and got him booked, thought it would help get Finch back her kids, or get her out of jail, or something, the stupid fucking idiot. He thought it would help Laurel and all it’s done is screw things up. And all of that fucking talk about trusting her and being honest with her and maybe starting over, starting right this time, well, she knows how far she can throw those words. Fuck. Fuck him and fuck her.

And she can't admit how much it hurts, even to herself, but it does, God it does, like she’s been stabbed someplace deep inside herself she didn't yet know could be hurt, like a strong hand is pressing itself into the wound, digging around inside her chest. She shouldn't have trusted him, told herself not to let herself be taken in by his eyes, his smile, by the way he looked at her. But she was foolish and she let her heart, her body do the thinking and now Finch is doubly fucked if she can't figure this one out, can't beg and plead and promise and threaten her way into delaying those kids from going into foster care until she and Neal can find a way to spring her free.

She’s playing with fire, Laurel knows this too well, letting herself do the things she swore to herself she wouldn't, not after that disaster of a year; letting herself be too much like Annalise, like her father, too focused on winning at any cost. She tries, tries so hard not to let that darkness out of her, not to let the ruthless, terrible things inside her see the light, tries to win her cases, help her clients without becoming the thing she fears most, hates most, but sometimes it's hard, so goddamn hard.

Because sometimes it's too, too easy to let the worst parts of her take control, tell herself she’s doing it to help her clients and let herself be what she knows she is, deep inside.

But not today, she thinks, not fucking today. Today she still has the strength, still has the moves, the options to avoid that, letting the darkest parts of her breathe. Today she still has hope that Neal McKinnon will flash his charming white-boy smile and talk to Gio Echeverria about how much he loves his girlfriend, loves his kids and convince him he needs to do whatever it takes to bail her out so that she can go back to them. And all Laurel will have to do is make a few calls, call Kate over at DHS and tell her she’s fucking working on it, but it’ll take a day or two and Kate just needs to give her time.

Kate’s half in love with her, so it should do the trick, half in love with her and owes her. It's been that way ever since a drunken Bar Association Christmas party two years ago when Laurel matched one of the ADA’s drink for drink and still had enough coordination, enough sense to hold Kate’s hair back when she got sick on too much salsa and cheap vodka, pour her into a cab, and not to say a thing to Kate’s husband, not to act weird after Kate slipped her hand up Laurel’s skirt, told Laurel to come home with her. The offer would have been tempting, Laurel always joked, if Kate hadn't smelled like a Tijuana taco stand.

But it means that Kate owes her and she knows it and it's the kind of debt that she wants forgiven as fast as possible, wants everything put to bed on her drunken seduction. Laurel’s held out so far, but now, now she thinks she might need to cash that debt in. 

She picks up the phone and dials and hopes that Kate’s in, and in a good mood. And then, after the call to DHS, well, then she might just make a call to someone in the DA’s office and pretend to let slip that she suspects Frank isn't keeping to his bail conditions, get that asshole thrown back inside for fucking up her case with Finch, for putting her in this impossible spot.

Except she won't, because as angry, as fucking _incensed_ as she is, Laurel isn’t petty, isn't spiteful. She’s angry at herself, really, for trusting Frank to be anything other than what he is. A leopard can't change its spots and all that, after all, and Laurel was stupid and foolish to think that Frank could ever be anything other than a man with selective morals, selective ideas about who deserves help. She should've kept a closer eye on him, should've made it clear that the way to express any affection or loyalty or apology was not to get involved, try to help her by cutting through legalities. She’s not fucking Annalise and their relationship is not transactional, she won't only care about him when he proves his usefulness. And truly, truly, fuck him for thinking it is, fuck him for thinking so little of her that he believes he has to prove himself useful before she really can let herself love him again. Well, Laurel certainly doesn't fucking love him now, even as she knows the lie she tells herself. She wouldn't be this fucking furious if she didn’t.

“Kate?” Laurel begins as the call goes through. “It's Laurel Castillo. I need a huge favor.”

He hears a sigh on the other end of the call, the kind that makes her blood run cold because it means that maybe she’s crossing a line, leveraging her personal relationships for professional gain, maybe walking into something a little too similar to what Annalise used to do with a smile and a lie to every single person she claimed to care about.

“Please Kate,” Laurel says, barreling on past the feeling of guilt that blooms deep in her gut. “I’ve got four kids who are gonna wind up in foster care for a year, probably gonna be split up that whole time unless you give me some time before the dependency hearing.”

There’s a long silence, another long sigh. “Laurel,” Kate says softly. “You know I can't do that. There’s a statutory requirement that a hearing be held within 72 hours.”

“I’ve got bail coming, I promise,” Laurel tells her. “My client’ll be out before the weekend. Do what you have to do, but please, kick this hearing out as long as you can.”

“That's not up to me,” Kate says. “You know it's not up to me.”

Laurel nods, realizes Kate can't see her. “I know, but please, can you just do what you can?”

“What's this about Laurel?” she asks.

“I've got a client in lockup, but she’s getting out,” Laurel explains fiercely. “I swear to you she’ll be out by the hearing. She’s got no relatives Kate, so she needs to be out or the kids are going into the system.”

Another sigh. “I’m sorry to hear that, I really am. But I’m not responsible for scheduling these things.”

“Please,” Laurel says, _begs,_ though she’d never admit that's what she’s doing. “Please Kate, there's got to be something.”

“If bail’s coming, if you get something that proves bail’s coming you might be able to convince a judge to keep the kids out. _Might_ , but it’ll depend on the judge, on when she’s gonna be bailed. It's a long shot.”

“I know,” Laurel breathes. “I know. But I gotta do what I can.”

“What's going on?” Kate asks, voice low. “You always fight for your people, but this is something else.”

“Boyfriend’s abusive,” Laurel says shortly. “Wouldn't put up bail for her and she got thrown back inside because she violated the stay-away order. Because of the damn kids. Now the boyfriend’s inside on a possession charge and there's no one to take care of the kids.”

Kate hums, like she hears something in Laurel’s voice, something that gives her pause, makes her wonder and what exactly she knows about Laurel. Laurel knows she’s letting herself get too emotional about this case, letting it suck her down into a dangerous quicksand, but well, at least she recognizes the risk, recognizes the game she’s playing. “Sucks.”

“Yeah,” Laurel sighs, refusing to admit that it's her fault, her fucking fault that Finch’s kids are about to be thrown into foster care, separated for who knows how long, all because she trusted Frank, trusted him not to do anything stupid, not to fuck things up for her more, to take the things he found in her office and forget them, not to use them for his own advantage.

“Yeah, it does.”

“I’ll see what I can do to kick the hearing out,” Kate says finally. “But you have to work the bail angle if I can't.”

“Got it,” Laurel tells her. “Thanks Kate, I mean it.”

There’s a laugh over the line. “If you really meant that you wouldn't keep calling me.”

“You love when I call,” Laurel says. “I bet I’m the most interesting part of your day.”

She hears a noise like a scoff. “Try some humility now and again Laurel. It’d look good on you.”

“Everything looks good on me,” Laurel jokes, mostly because she can, because it's easy and safe and they both know that after Kate’s failed attempt at drunken seduction they're never going to be more than friends, but they know enough dirt on each other to have an open honesty that’s rare for Laurel at least.

Kate laughs again. “Yeah, that's what I thought. Go fight for justice and get off my damn line.”

“Thanks again,” Laurel tells her before hanging up. “Really.”

She’s got sentencings in two hours, but takes a calculated risk, thinks she can pay Finch a visit before the hearings, figure out if there’s any way the sister with the three kids can take Finch’s for a few days if she has to. If Neal can get his client to front the bail for Finch, and the sister takes the kids for a week, they’ll manage to stay out of foster care even if the hearing happens before Finch gets sprung. God, God, she hopes the sister just takes one for the team for a couple of days. Seven kids’ll be tough, goddamn it’ll be tough, but it’ll be so much better for the kids than fucking foster care. 

She doesn't always think that, Laurel’s familiar enough with horrible parents to often think that foster care is a better option than staying with piece of shit parents. She’d probably have turned out better with some time in foster care, her dad’s money be damned. But these kids, Finch fucking loves them, she can see that much the moment Finch mentions them. And yeah, her boyfriend is an abusive fuck, and the kids don't need to be exposed to that, and it's gonna fuck them up to have seen their mom’s jaw get shattered, but Finch is a good mom, and the kids’ll stay together and Laurel’s gonna pull this off, she’s gonna fucking pull this one off, no matter what it takes.


	8. Chapter 8

Finch doesn't know shit about the boyfriend getting arrested when Laurel gets there, has to take a couple minutes just to process things, wrap her mind around the fact that she’s in jail and has no idea what's happening with her kids, whether they’re safe, scared, what, and can't do a damn thing about it now.

“He said he was done with that shit,” is the first thing Finch says when she’s able to manage speech. “After Isaiah, he told me he wasn't gonna deal no more.”

Laurel shrugs, tries not to flinch, let it show on her face that Gio was probably true to his word, probably _wasn't_ dealing, that it was Frank and a set up and her fault, God, her fault. “Nadia, I need to know if there's anyone who can take the kids for a few days. Just until I get you out.”

Finch shakes her head, stares down at her cuffed hands, fat tears beginning to slide down her dark cheeks. “No,” she tells Laurel softly. “No one. Gio’s got a sister, but she won't. I know it. And I got no one. My brother’s upstate at Rockview and my sister’s in Denver; she’ll never take them.”

“Gio’s sister,” Laurel prompts, because that's the direction she needs to turn the conversation. “You willing to give me her number if you don't want to call? Just in case, just to check?”

Finch sighs, wipes angrily at the tears staining the corners of her mouth, her chin with her cuffed hands. “Yeah, yeah ok. Can't hurt.”

“Good,” Laurel says gently, nodding. “Good. And I’m working to get you outta here. It might take a few days, but I’ve got a plan, ok?”

She nods mechanically, doesn't look at all convinced.

“And once you’re out, I want you to at least call those people I told you about; see what help they can give you,” Laurel prompts. “You don't have to do anything, but I just want you to speak to someone.”

“I’m not,” Nadia begins, takes a long, deep breath, eyes closing. “I’m not leaving Gio. I’m not doing that to my kids.”

“Ok,” Laurel tells her, trying not to let her disappointment, her frustration show on her face. “That's ok, it's your choice and your life and I respect that, no matter what. And if you ever change your mind, the offer’ll still stand.”

“Just help me get my kids safe.”

“I will,” she promises, trying so, so hard not to point out that getting the kids safe ought to include ditching the abusive, drug dealing boyfriend, but it's not her place, much as she wants it to be. It's not her choice, not her fight. And it’ll only destroy what Laurel’s trying to do for Finch, how she’s trying to help Finch to go against her on this, to push. “I’ll let you know if bail shakes out.”

“And my kids, you gotta keep me updated on my kids,” Finch pleads, tears springing to her eyes again.

Laurel nods. “That too. Anything I hear, I’ll do my best to let you know. But you’ll be out soon and won't need me.”

Finch gives her a thin smile, but there’s something like hope that shines behind her eyes, tentative, like green shoots in early spring. “Hope so. Marisol might agree if I promise only for a few days. I’ll call Christina too, tell her she needs to look after her brothers, keep them out of her hair.”

“You want to make the calls?” Laurel asks. “Or would you rather I explain things to the kids’ aunt?”

“I will,” Finch says after a long moment chewing hard at her lower lip. “It’ll be better coming from me. She won't understand the legal stuff.”

Laurel nods, decides not to point out that it may be helpful for the ask to come from someone who didn't threaten to kill Marisol’s brother, from someone who can shit talk in Spanish with her, explain things in a language she’s more comfortable with. “Keep me updated. You got enough to make the calls?”

“Yeah,” Finch sighs. “Yeah, I’ll come up with the money.”

“I know it looks bad right now,” Laurel tells her, holding her gaze. “But it won't forever.”

Finch nods, blinks hard against her tears, clenching her jaw tightly. “My lucks gotta change soon, right?”

Laurel nods. “Odds say a slump can only last so long. You’re owed a nice winning streak soon. Tell Gio’s sister not to be a selfish bitch and take your kids for a night or two and lets get this shit put to bed.”

Finch laughs sharply, as Laurel knew she would and Laurel finally feels like she can leave, can go to her sentencing hearings because Finch is on board with the plan, because they have a plan at all. It's not a great one, not by half, relies on far too many moving parts, far too many ways it’ll come crashing down in failure. But hell, it's the best they can do. And it's something. And sometimes that's good enough.

Sentencings go smoothly enough; no one reconsiders their plea and the judge is one who never goes too harsh, usually agrees to whatever deal Laurel and the DA managed to hash out, stays pretty firmly within the sentencing guidelines. It would normally be great, normally be an easy afternoon, but having Judge Petro means that it gives Laurel a lot of time to think, about Finch and her kids and fucking Frank Delfino. She’s got a couple of hours to think about how much she wants to go back in time a week, or maybe five years, and tell herself not to let herself thaw, not to think that Frank is a changed man, a good man, or even a good man for her. He’s none of those things and he has only made her life more difficult, only caused her guilt and anger and the first twinges of panic.

So she’s a little jittery when she gets back to the office at 3:30, already trying to figure out what she’s gonna do if Finch can’t get bailed, or bailed in time or can't find anyone to take the kids for two or three days. But then Neal catches her eye just as she’s going back to her desk, gives her a sly grin that he just can't contain and she knows, knows he’s come through.

She detours to his office, drops heavily into his guest chair, letting her bag clatter against the floor. She’s exhausted and she just needs some good news from him, can't be bothered to keep up appearances, not right now.

“Well,” Neal tells her as he shuts the door softly, comes up behind her. Good, Laurel thinks, kid at least has the sense to keep this conversation, this ethically murky alliance quiet “Gio’s on board for bail. Still thinks his sister’s gonna say no to the kids; she’s got a special needs daughter who requires a lot of attention, but if the hearing can get kicked to Thursday afternoon…”

“I talked to Kate Ramsey over at DHS,” Laurel says, trying to resist the temptation to flop her head back against the headrest of the chair, close her eyes and fall asleep. They’ve gotten over the first hurdle, still have a path forward, but it's not over.

“She’s gonna do what she can so that Finch can be out before the hearing. But she can’t go beyond the 72.”

Neal nods. “I told Gio to hurry with bail, that he needs to reach out to someone today, hopefully have Nadia out and processed tomorrow.”

“Finch is gonna try the sister,” Laurel adds. “Let her know it’ll only be a couple days at most. I may give her a call myself. Try explaining the situation; that it's more serious than she probably thinks. Explaining in Spanish might help too.”

“You think we’ll pull it off?”

Laurel frowns, tilts her head forward so that she can watch Neal’s expression. He looks shaken, she thinks, pale and twitchy.

He looks like she feels half the time. “I don't know,” she admits. “It's gonna come down to timing, and there’s not much we can do about that.”

Neal sighs and Laurel can't help but notice the sad, downward cast to his mouth, the way he can’t quite meet her eyes. “We did what we could,” Laurel tells him, feeling like she shouldn't be having this conversation, not with Neal, not with someone who’s been in the PD’s office for more than six weeks. She feels like futility has been bred into their bones, but Neal, Neal has somehow avoided it. “And sometimes that's not enough.”

“Yeah,” Neal says, but doesn't sound like he really agrees, he sounds a little heartbroken.

“Neal,” she urges. “You can't save everyone. You’ll go mad if you don't accept that.”

“Yeah,” he repeats.

“Go figure out how to get Gio’s charges dismissed,” Laurel says, swallowing the urge to let slip that they were likely planted, not his drugs at all. “Stop focusing on what you can’t fix.”

“I know,” he says, giving her a tired smile. “Jerrod tells me that all time.”

“Listen to Jerrod,” Laurel advises. “He’s the boss for a reason.”

“You giving me career advice too Castillo?”

“I’m giving you life advice,” she tells him, trying to give him an encouraging smile. How, Laurel thinks, how the hell did she wind up playing life coach to this man when she can barely keep herself from going mad. “And then I’m leaving and you’re gonna make some headway with the case.”

“Got it,” he says, rolling his eyes like a petulant child as she stands, mimics the gesture.

Laurel goes back to her office, calls Marisol Echeverria and leaves a quick message in Spanish when the call rings through, urges her to call Laurel back, take the kids for a few days until things get sorted out. She doesn't hold out much hope even for a callback, but figures she has a duty to Finch to try.

 

Something like a thousand hours later, Laurel stumbles into her apartment, throwing her keys, her bag, her shoes in a cluttered pile by the door. She shuts the door behind her, leans heavy against it, eyes slipping closed and her breath exiting her lungs in a long, long sigh. God, she's tired, God she’s angry. She half considered calling Frank as she waited for the bus, calling and telling him she’s tired, she’s sick, she’s just not feeling it tonight, finding some reason she doesn't want him to come by. Because she doesn't want to deal with him, deal with the still burning anger low in her chest, with the way his actions show just how much he doesn't respect her, thinks she needs to be saved, step in and solve her problems. That's not her, that's never fucking been her and it makes her shake with anger at how little Frank truly knows about her, how little he respects her. But more than that, it makes her cold with rage at how she let herself think that she could trust him, convinced herself that he knew her, might feel something like love for her and wouldn't ultimately hurt her again.

And because she can't fucking bring herself to acknowledge how much he’s hurt her, how much work he’s created for her and how he’s singlehandedly fucked Nadia Finch in a way Laurel’s not even sure she’s capable of fixing, she refrains from calling him, pretends that nothing is different.

Laurel sighs, flops her head back against the wood of her door, then pushes herself off, pushes herself to stand. She shucks her dress over her head, pulls on a pair of worn jeans she left hanging off the back of her couch, and considers finding a shirt but decides she can't be bothered. She just wants to crawl into bed, sleep for days, sleep until all this is over. Instead she just falls onto her couch, sprawls across the cushions and stares at her ceiling, willing her racing brain to slow.

She must fall asleep, because when there’s a sharp rap on her door Laurel’s eyes flick open, her heart jumping hard and fast in her chest and little tendrils of panic shooting, hot and sharp, through her fingers.

She pushes the panic, the lingering exhaustion down, away from her and out of her mind. Frank. She knows it's Frank. Everyone else calls first. Everyone else _knows_ to call first. Laurel has never been big on surprises.

She thinks for probably far too long about ignoring the knock, letting him think she’s out, still at work, off at trivia, something. He probably won't bother to call; what they have is too casual to warrant a call checking up on her, but well, somehow that reads to Laurel like admitting defeat, admitting Frank’s got to her and she’s angry and _hurt._ So Laurel groans softly, rises from the couch and stumbles to the door, yanks it open.

“Hey,” he says, giving her a small smirk, slipping past Laurel into the apartment. “Nice look, killer.”

Laurel startles, looks down, remembers she’s clad only in her black, lacy bra and ratty jeans. “Got _your_ attention, didn't it?”

He laughs, but she sees his eyes flick down to her chest, pupils widening, sees the swift bob of his throat as he swallows. “You gonna make fun of me if I tell you I’ve been looking forward to this all day? Cause I’ve been thinkin’ about you all damn day,” he asks, but doesn't sound all too concerned with that prospect.

He saunters in like he owns the place then and if Laurel’s blood wasn't already boiling she’d probably have to take a deep breath, like she’s done nearly every evening for the past week, at the sight of him, cocksure and comfortable, in her space, back in her life like he never left, have to take a long moment to steady her breathing, steady the desire that shoots through her and pools low in her gut, making her body hum with need. He’s her weakness, and Laurel can’t pretend otherwise; her Achilles heel, her blindspot, her kryptonite, _whatever_. He makes her weak, makes her falter, makes her crave him more than she craves anything else, more than rationality, more than sense.

“Yeah,” Laurel says, because it's not a lie, no, God, it's not a lie. “Me too.”

“Yeah?’ Frank echoes, turning, positively stalking back to her, a little grin slipping onto his face. “You thinking about me at work?”

She nods before she can help herself, feeling her breath hitch.

He reaches her then, running his hands up her sides and oh, oh, _shit_. A tremor runs through her bones and she practically melts into his hands as a thumb glides against her hip, as he leans closer. “You ever think about touching yourself at work?” he asks as his breath fans warm against her exposed neck, her collarbone. “You ever sit at your desk and think about what we did there?”

“No,” she breathes, glancing away from him so he doesn't see the lie on her face.

“Liar,” he growls anyway as he lowers his lips to her neck, running his teeth across her throat. And oh, oh, he follows the path of his teeth with his tongue and his hands are slipping beneath the waistband on her jeans and she really just wants to surrender to his touch, surrender to the feeling, the desire thrumming low and hot in her blood, but she can’t, she can't. It would be so easy and she wants to, she just wants to feel, not to think, but well, she wouldn't be Laurel if she didn't put her needs ahead of her wants.

“Frank,” she says, voice going cold, hard, pushing insistently against his chest. “No. Stop.”

He pulls back instantly, he’s never been anything other than conscientious about Laurel’s demands, desires. But he still looks hurt, a little frown flicking across his mouth and his eyes pulling together. “No?”

“You went through my files the other night,” Laurel begins, hand still against his chest and she has to stifle the quickening desire to move her hands over his pecs, his shoulders; to tug on his earlobe with her teeth. “You saw names, cases.”

He nods, gives her one of those casual, unconcerned shrugs, just a little hitch of his shoulders. “But you told me to forget everything. And I did, don't worry.”

“You didn't though,” she growls, stepping back from his arms, stepping away from the fingers that still stroke alone her hips, sending shivers of desire up her spine. “You framed my client’s boyfriend.”

Frank blinks, steps back. “What?”

“Did you,” Laurel grits out, slowly, trying to still her breathing. “Frame my client’s boyfriend? Stick a couple of bricks in his trunk and call in a tip?”

“Laurel,” he begins and she’d be lying if she said she wasn't impressed with how confused he sounds, how uncertain. She wants to tear into his chest and open him up, see the inside so that he can’t lie to her, can’t pretend, protect her because he thinks that's what she needs. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

She sighs, bears her teeth in a grimace, a warning. She will fucking kill him if he tries anything like this again, tries to lie to her about what he did. “My client got fucked. Because her boyfriend got thrown into county too. And their kids are going into the system. If you had _anything_ to do with it, Frank, anything, I swear to god…”

“I didn't,” he cuts her off, and there’s an edge in his voice that sounds like a low note of caution, like alarm bells in the back of her mind, telling her to back down, back off, before she gets hurt. “I have no idea what you're talking about, but I didn't frame anyone.”

“Eggs 911,” Laurel says sharply. “Levi Wescott. You did the same thing to him five years ago. And you framed my client’s boyfriend.”

Frank’s eyes narrow, jaw going tight and angry. “No, I didn't,” he tells her, crossing his arms over his chest and stepping back from her when he realizes she’s not buying it. “Why the hell would I frame someone I don't even know?”

“I don't know,” she hisses, trying to force herself to calm, to not let herself get frustrated. “But it was you. I know it.”

“Not everything’s a conspiracy,” he tells her, voice low, sounding hurt, sounding angry. “Maybe the boyfriend is just a shithead dealer?”

“Maybe he is, but it's too coincidental,” she says, and she knows her eyes flash, knows her hands are balled into fists, but she just can't stop. “He stopped dealing when their kids were born, hasn't had an arrest in six years. Why now?”

“The hell should I know?” Frank asks, throwing his hands up, but when he speaks again his voice is low, sad, resigned.

“Maybe he didn't stop, maybe he started back up to make bail for your girl. It's not on me to figure out why. But I didn't have a thing to do with it. Ask Bon if you don't believe me.”

“Bonnie?” Laurel chokes out.

“Yeah,” he nods, jaw still tight, refusing to meet her eyes. “What day would it have been Laurel? Monday, Tuesday? She’ll vouch that I haven't left her damn office this whole week. She’s had me sorting through her files cause she decided her old system wasn't doing it for her.”

“Frank,” Laurel begins because it's not that fucking easy, not that simple an explanation. She trusts Bonnie, trusts Bonnie sometimes more than she trusts herself, but she knows the other woman would lie for Frank, knows that the strange loyalty between her and Frank goes beyond anything she and Bonnie have built in the past five years. She knows the truth is not so simple, if there’s even truth to be found at all.

“No,” he says with a quick, dismissive shrug. “Either you believe me or you don't. I’m not going to account for every minute of my day with you. Either you gotta trust me or you don't. And you don't.”

“It's not…” she tries again, falters, because well, it's true. She doesn't fucking trust him, not when she knows what he’s capable of, what he’s done in the past. Not when the simplest explanation tells her that Finch’s boyfriend is in jail because of Frank, because Laurel was an idiot and trusted him, trusted that he wouldn't do anything to hurt her.

“It’s exactly like that,” he tells her, knowing her words before she speaks them. He sounds hurt, she thinks, something like pain, like guilt, like doubt blooming deep in her chest, sounds hurt that she would believe it of him. And yet, she thinks, he once sounded hurt when she questioned him about what he did for Annalise, what exactly his duties entailed, made her doubt herself, what she knew to be true. Frank turns away from her, stalking, heavy-footed, into her kitchen, pulling open a drawer by her sink. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Here,” he says, holding something out to her and it's a long, long moment before her brain catches up with what she’s seeing, before she realizes what he’s got clutched in his hand. Her stomach drops and she knows she stops breathing as panic, and the beginning of something that feels like terror, shoot through her veins. A knife. A knife.

“Jesus,” she breathes, flinching backwards, eyes darting around the room for some means of escape if it comes to that, something to defend herself against the large, sharp kitchen knife clutched in his hand. She’s got nothing. Maybe she could get to her keys or to the door if she needed, but knows, _knows_ , she will be too slow. He could fucking kill her if he wanted, could slice her throat or her wrists, could sink the blade into her chest... her brain skips its track, unable to continue the thought to its conclusion, freezing in fear, focused only on how she can get out of this situation, get away from the knife or get the knife in her hand, turn it against Frank. Something. Anything.

“See,” he says casually then, a smirk that looks more like a grimace snaking onto his face, letting the knife drop to his side.

“You don't trust me at all.”

“I don't trust anyone with a fucking knife,” she gasps, trying to make herself feel anger, feel rage, feel something other than trembling, heart-stopping terror, unable to tear her eyes away from the blade, even now that it's hanging loosely at his side, no longer a danger to her. She’s still half considering taking another large step backwards, the fear still coursing though her veins because until the knife is far, far away she cannot allow herself to relax. 

She knows, with what’s left of her rational mind, that he’s trying to make a point and she should feel fucking guilty that she ever, for even half a second, considered he was intending to hurt her, but she can't, can’t feel anything but the lingering threads of fear. She’ll feel guilty when the knife is far, far away and long gone, but now, now she can feel nothing but dread.

Frank knows, he fucking _knows_ her childhood, or knows enough, knows what she faced from her father, from his partners, his people, knows that he should not come at her with anything like a fucking knife, not _ever._ He should know she’s already teetering on the edge of something like panic, fear coming to a boil deep in her chest, tightening her breath.

“You should trust _me,_ ” he tells her, his voice somewhere between and plea and demand. He reaches out again, offering her the handle of the knife now. When she makes no move to take it, when she flinches back further, recoils from his touch, Frank frowns and something cold, something hard slips into his gaze, like steel doors slamming into place in front of his eyes. He steps forward, grabs her hand before she can make much of an effort to wrench it away and he’s stronger, so much stronger than her, has always been stronger than her. He forces the handle into her hand, wraps her fingers around it and brings her resisting hand up to his chest, so that the knife rests against his heart, gently, but with enough pressure Laurel knows it will sting.

She can feel the steady shallow breaths he takes, the gentle inhale and exhale through her wrist, her fingers, fights the temptation to press just a little harder against his chest, hard enough to cut through his shirt, cut through his skin, wants to see him bleed for her, wants to see how far he’ll let her go before he stop this.

“I trust you,” he says softly, taking his hand from around her wrist, dropping it to his side, leaving Laurel’s hand clenched around the knife. “You wanna hurt me, go ahead. But I don't believe you want to, I don't believe you will.”

“Frank,” she snaps, angry now to conceal the burning tremble from her voice, the panic from her bones though she doesn't move her hand, doesn't drop it or pull the knife away from Frank’s chest, may even press the blade harder into his skin. “Get rid of this fucking thing.”

He steps forward, steps into the long, sharp blade of the knife. Laurel falters back, has to step back, because she doesn't want to hurt him, angry as she is, because she _does_ want to hurt him, really truly does. She doesn't know what she’ll do if she doesn't step back, step away from the ledge, from the long descent into something dark and bitter and honestly a little terrifying. “You get rid of it.”

“Frank,” she says again, though this time she sounds like she’s begging, soft and breathy and low, cannot conceal the tremble from her voice. “Please.”

“No,” he tells her, something sharp tinting his words.

“You’ve made your point,” she pleads, for some reason unable to move, unable to tear her hand away. “You’re right, I don't trust you, now please, please, stop.”

“No,” he says again. “Because you don't get it yet.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Get what?” Laurel asks, voice edged and deadly.

“That it's not me,” he says, stepping forward again. “I was the one that fucked up last time, but this time, this time it's you. You’re gonna ruin things before we even start. Because you keep telling me you're not the same person you were five years ago, but neither am I.”

She doesn't want to go there, doesn't want to press the issue, but she’s never been very good at losing, never been very good at ceding the point, so she stumbles her way into the minefield and keeps walking, consequences and blown off limbs be damned. “And what am I supposed to think about you?” Laurel asks. “The only thing keeping you from a felony conviction is me. Do you expect me to think that planting drugs in someone's car is suddenly beneath you?”

Something jumps in his jaw, clenched tight. “I expect you to remember I’m not an idiot. That I wouldn't do something illegal just for kicks.”

“No,” she counters, stepping forward until Frank winces, hisses. “But you'd do it for me. If you thought I needed it, the help, to win my case.”

He shakes his head, lets out a long slow breath, face falling. “I wouldn't. That was Annalise. You don't need my help. And you certainly don't want it.”

She must not look convinced yet, but Frank must see something in her eyes that makes him continue, try to plead his case.

“Annalise couldn't handle losing, so I had to do things to keep that from happening. I’d never do that to you. For you,” he sighs, and finally reaches out, plucks the knife from where it's practically been glued to her hand. “You deserve to get your wins on your own, without what I do to make them happen.”

“The moral win?” she asks, echoing his words the first time they met again, tries for sarcastic, but the way she knows her shoulders have sagged with relief, with exhaustion, now that the tension of holding a blade against his chest has faded, there’s no sarcasm left in her voice. There’s no sarcasm left in _her_. It's just something flat, something sad.

He shrugs, the knife falling to his side. Laurel wishes he would just put it away, back in the drawer, get it the fuck away from her because there is no way she’s going to relax, no way she’s going to think straight while either of them have a weapon in their hands. “If you want to call it that. You just always needed to do it on your own. I know that Laurel, and I'd never take that away from you.”

She thinks maybe she’s not a different person, that maybe, fundamentally, she’s still the Laurel he knew so long ago; because every time Frank looks at her, every time he speaks, she feels like that girl again, feels like he can look through all the layers of armor and anger and bullshit she’s erected to defend herself, keep herself safe and able to survive the day and just see her.

She thinks that maybe with all of that stripped away she might be the person he thinks she is; half considers that maybe she doesn't mind it, being the same, being the person he thinks she is. Because at least that person is good, is beautiful and worthy and isn't full of this darkness, this corrosion, this weight that drags her down and steals her breath and makes her feel like she’ll never be ok again.

“Look Laurel,” he tells her, stepping back and setting the knife, gently, against her counter, giving her a pointed look as he does, like he’s making sure that's enough distance between Laurel and the knife, making sure she’s not still burning with tension and fear. His eyes are soft and she ought not to let herself think it, but she could swear she sees an apology in his gaze, because he did remember how much a drawn knife would set her heart pounding and the cold sweat of terror pooling at the small of her back. “I have to trust you. The only way I get out of this jam is by trusting you. But you…you’re whole job is to not trust me, to doubt everything I say until you can verify it. But that's not…if you want to be anything more than my PD, that can't be how this works, you can't doubt everything I say.”

“You don't trust me either,” she snaps, and she knows she’s being defensive, she knows she’s deflecting, turning her own faults around and accusing him of them, but well, that doesn't mean it's not true. He doesn't trust her either; they’re two creatures filled with caution, with doubt, with the full weight of their past hurts whispering in their ears. “You know I won't sabotage your case, but you don't trust me to give me the truth, tell me how you got into this mess. You don't trust me to know the truth about your life.”

His lips quirk and Laurel thinks for half a moment that he’s going to challenge her, argue and then she doesn't know what will happen, because she’s only barely keeping herself together, barely keeping her anger, her hurt at bay. She could let herself be so, so angry at him if given half a chance, for Finch, sure, but for the past five years she unconvincingly claims she’s gotten over, gotten past and forgiven him for. “That’s true.”

And well that, that takes all the wind out of her damn sails. Because when Frank ducks his head, eyes soft and sad and admits the truth in that tiny, flat voice, well, Laurel’s anger goes up in a puff of smoke, goes limp like a bursting balloon. She can't fight against a shadow.

She sighs, moves back further into her apartment, sinking down onto her couch, sinking into the cushions, wishing they would swallow her up. Laurel runs her hands through her hair, pushing it back and away from her face, her sigh long and ragged.

Frank trails after her, settles himself against the opposite armrest of the couch, turns and faces her and watches her like she’s something dangerous, something to be feared, jaw tight and his eyes narrowed.

“That's true, I haven't been trusting you either,” he continues finally, sighing deep. “But I’m going to now. I didn't steal the car, didn't chop the parts. Hell, the garage isn't even a chop shop.”

“What?” Laurel asks, knowing how confused she must look. Because what the fuck is going on if he’s fucking innocent? Who is he covering for and why the hell was he in the garage at all?

“I’m not even a mechanic,” Frank tells her with a laugh. “And you, princess, are not quite as good as you think you are if you didn't realize that.”

He holds up his hands, wiggles his fingers slowly, a wide, teasing grin slipping onto his face and Laurel’s still fucking confused and halfway to rage filled because he is not allowed to call her princess, not anymore, not when he’s using it to mock her and oh, oh, _oh._

“Your hands,” she breathes and oh, oh, she hates herself, hates herself for letting her memories of Frank blind her to who he really is, who he has become, for not noticing the things she should have, for accepting the things that were the same and overlooking what is different because she thought she knew Frank. She never would have been so careless with a client she didn't know, never would have allowed herself to overlook crucial details like whether he actually has the markers of a car thief. “I didn't even think. But your hands aren't a mechanic’s hands.”

His grin slides wider, teeth showing, edged and feral. “Damn right.”

“Then what were you doing there?” she asks, trying to keep the ragged edge from her voice. “Who are you protecting?”

“I’m protecting myself,” he tells her firmly, taking a long, slow gulp of what she thinks might be fear. “I…I’m a clean up man Laurel. That's what I was doing in the garage that night.”

“But…” she trails off, unable to give voice to the racing of her thoughts, from the connections happening in her brain, faster than her mouth can hope to keep up with. Of course he’s a clean-up man, what else could he be? Frank’s always been a clean-up man really, always been responsible for picking up other people’s messes, taking care of people since she’s known him. It's not just his profession, it's something deep within him, intrinsic to the man she knew, the man she thinks she might be starting to know now. Frank takes care of people, has an almost pathological need to put the interests of those he cares about, those he’s loyal to above his own. Whether that meant following Annalise’s orders like a dog, no matter how illegal or doomed to failure, or the pleasure she knows he gets from eating her out, well he’s a man who takes care of things, often at a cost to himself.

But this, _this_ doesn't make sense, it doesn't make any goddamn sense. If he’s not a mechanic, not a car thief, is only a clean-up man then what the fuck is he doing facing a couple of felony charges for auto theft? The car’s owner is alive, no injuries, only reported the car getting stolen; nothing else, Laurel’s seen the reports…but…if Frank’s not a car thief than what the fuck is he doing, why’s he still lingering with this case rather than helping her fight it. Except, except if getting to the bottom of things would make his life worse, would screw him worse than he already is. Except, the thought settling low and heavy like a punch to her stomach, stealing the last of her breath, the last of her fear until there’s only certainty. “Who killed the real carjacker Frank?”

He shrugs, smiles apologetically. “It doesn't matter; I can't get them involved.”

“So you work for them?”

He nods.

“That's who you were cleaning up for?” she asks gently, urging him to continue, to confess, to let her save him.

Another nod, jaw stiff and tight like he’s fighting against himself to let her know this much.

“And you won’t betray them?”

“I _can't_ betray them,” he corrects carefully.

And that, well, _that_ says just enough to Laurel to tell her exactly how bad things are for him, for _them_ , because well they’re together in this now, they’re a team and Laurel isn't walking away, isn't letting him walk away this time. It tells her exactly how bad things have gotten, because well, Laurel speaks this code of obligation, of loyalty, of fucking _fear_ like it’s her mother tongue; was raised with men, with _boys_ , who knew only steely silence and the quick shake of their head and the inside of cinder block cells when the end finally came for them, who never knew her father, nope, never heard of Jorge Castillo, no sir, sorry officer. So she knows, _knows_ that when Frank says he can’t betray his boss, his _owner_ , she knows exactly what that means.

“So that's it huh?” she asks him, because she needs to hear him say it, admit it. “This is the end of the line?”

He nods again. “Unless you can think of some way I can wiggle out on my own.”

“I think that's easier said than done when you can't mention the person who actually stole the car because it’ll get your charges changed to murder,” she quips, watches him grin at her, like this is a game, like he’s excited to see her try. “Best I can do right now is plea you down.”

“How much’ll I get?”

“Probably a year or two,” she tells him. “Max is seven.”

He nods. “Think of another play.”

“I’m not sure there is one,” she admits. “Not without putting eyes on things you don't want eyes on.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “I know.”

“Why the fuck did you let your prints get on the car, Frank?”

He shrugs. “I didn't.”

“Charge sheet says otherwise,” she counters.

“That,” he tells her, eyes suddenly lighting up and Laurel thinks finally, fucking _finally_ he’s willing to give her something, willing to work with her to maybe help beat this charge. “Use that. I wore gloves, you know I woulda used gloves.”

“Whole time?”

He nods. “I’ve been doing this a long time.”

“If that's true, fingerprint locations’ll look suspicious. I’ll have someone grab the full report,” she turns her eyes to him, watches him through narrowed eyes. “Why’d someone try to frame you?”

“Why does anyone do anything?”

“That's not an answer,” she tells him. “Who’d you piss off?”

“Plenty of people,” he shrugs. “No one enough to frame me.”

“And it had to be someone who didn't know about the murder,” she adds.

He nods. “Otherwise they woulda used that. Much more effective.”

“The real thief,” Laurel says, switching tactics. “Who was he?”

“No one,” Frank shrugs. “He doesn't matter.”

“Yeah, he does,” she insists. “Cause if we can prove it was someone else who stole those parts, I’ve got you reasonable doubt.”

“But you’ve also got a dead body,” he points out, frowning as his arms cross over his chest.

“Not necessarily. If you did your job right, he’s just a man in the wind.”

“Reasonable doubt,” Frank echoes.

She nods. “Who was he?”

“Older guy,” Frank says finally. “Blonde, long hair. Thin. Owed my boss some money.”

“So,” Laurel says slowly, allowing something to ease in her chest, allowing herself to relax slightly by degrees. She can see a plan forming, see a way, a chance to get Frank out of this, to cut him free of the trap. It's not a sure shot, not a guarantee, not at all, but it's a chance; the first real one they’ve had since his file landed on her desk. It's more than they’ve had before and it's _something_. It's good enough. “If we can trace the parts, somehow trace them back to the cars they were stolen from, find any eyewitnesses to the thefts, we can prove it wasn't you. We can try to suggest you were framed, or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We don't have to give them the body, we just have to give the jury a reason to think it wasn't you that stole the cars.”

“You really think that’ll work?” he asks skeptically.

“You know it will,” she tells him fiercely. They've both seen it happen time and time again. As long as Laurel can give just one juror a reason to think it was someone else, can convince them Frank’s a good guy, would never hurt a fly, all that jazz, well, that's all they’ll need. It's game over for the prosecution if she can give the jury a reason to _want_ to let him off, and give them someone else to pin the crime on. Reasonable doubt is all they need. “If we can make them believe the parts aren't yours, it's not a big leap to think the car isn't yours either. And the parts _aren't_ yours, I just have to figure out how to prove it.”

“Without getting me set up for a murder charge,” Frank points out.

“I’m not gonna make this worse,” she growls, glaring at him because she knows, can read it in his face, that he doesn't fucking trust her, doesn't believe she can fight her way out of this one, doesn't think she’s good enough to save him. And he’s still the same goddamn Frank, still the same man who will tell her pretty words, pretty lies, speak them like silk, like promises; that she’s beautiful and she’s smart and he loves her and he trusts her and will have her back when the chips are down, _no,_ when they’ve got the police breathing down their necks and jail time or worse hanging over their heads like blades, he will lie to her and leave her with nothing, just as he did before. Because he’s still the same goddamn Frank and he doesn't care about her, doesn't love her and she let herself believe, let herself be fooled, because it was so easy, so easy. “When I say I have your back I fucking mean it.”

She thinks he’s going to fight back, fight her, going to argue that she cuts and runs with the best of them, and she does, she knows it, thinks he’s gonna argue that she’ll betray him worse than he ever did her, but then something slips then, falters and all the anger goes out of his face. He runs a hand through his beard, eyes looking sad, frown deep and cutting hard lines into his mouth. “I really hurt you didn't I?”

She wants to deny it, wants to tell him she didn't fucking care, that she got over it within a month or two. But that's a lie and that doesn't do any justice to the struggle she had, to the strength she had to find, somewhere, in getting over him, in moving on as best she could. “Yeah,” she tells him. “You did.”

“You really did love me,” he says it like a statement, like a certainty, but his voice is soft and breathy, like he’s been shocked, like he never quite believed it until this moment.

“Course I did,” she says with a little roll of her shoulders. It shouldn't be this hard to admit it, shouldn't be this hard to open her chest and expose her heart to him; she’s been sleeping with him for a while now and he did, after all, have his mouth buried between her legs not twenty four hours ago, but it still is, still makes her pulse race and her breath come short.

He must hear the unspoken words in her voice, all the thousands of things she’s wanted to say to him for five long years, all the warring things she’s felt and buried deep within her chest, held close to her heart, all the things that admitting she once loved him mean, because something shines behind his eyes like a torch, like a fucking supernova and he stands, approaches her slowly, cautiously, like he doesn't quite trust her not to balk, not to run or fight. Frank slips off the couch, sinks to his knees in front of her, takes both her hands in his.

“I won't leave again,” he tells her, looking up into her eyes, sincere, unblinking, urging her to have faith in him, have the same unyielding faith he has in her. His fingers smooth over the back of her hand, skimming over the muscles and tendons and bones, then pressing against the thrumming pulse point on her wrist. “I may get sent upstate, but I’m not gonna leave you. Not again. As long as you’ll have me, Laurel, I’m yours. I’ve never stopped being yours.”

She thinks it's true, it must be true, because here they are and it's been five years, far, far longer than she actually knew him, so much longer than the actual time she spent with him, when she was his and yet, and yet, they cannot untie themselves, cannot extricate themselves from whatever it is that binds them together and it's clear neither of them wants to try. He wants her and she wants him, still, despite logic and sense and self-preservation telling her to run, to run, to save herself. They're strangers and yet they’re closer than they ever were as lovers. She doesn't know, she doesn't know, and all she knows is that she can't give him up again. It's that simple and that complicated and it's the only true thing she knows.

“Trust me then,” she says, voice low and edging towards a growl. “Trust me to do what I have to. Trust me to do this right, to know what needs to be done.”

He stares up at her, licks his lips and swallows hard, jaw clenched. “Laurel,” he begins.

“No,” she tells him sharply and her heart feels like maybe there’s a vice tightening around it, constricting it until it shatters.

“Either you trust me or you don't. Either you mean it or you don't.”

“Either we’re a team or we’re nothing,” he says with a slow nod, like he’s tasting the words, weighing them, deciding whether he likes the flavor, the heft of what she offers him.

“That's how this has to work,” she tells him. “You have to trust me to know what I have to do. Trust me to do it.”

He looks for a moment like he’s going to argue, going to let her know all his doubts, all the reasons he thinks she’s going to fail, all the ways he knows her plan can go wrong, she can see Frank fight with himself, sees the clench in his jaw and the tension in his arms, muscles and tendons straining against something internal, some battle inside himself, trying to decide whether he can trust her, whether she's worth it, whether whatever he feels for Laurel is something that’s mirrored in her, whether she’s even worthy of his faith. And then she sees him swallow his doubts, his fears, sees his eyes go clear again and she knows, whatever his decision, he’s made it.

“Ok,” he says slowly, hands sliding up her forearms, taking her elbows, leaning forward until his breath whispers against her neck. “Ok. I hear you.”

And it's that simple and that complicated and that's it, that's it, that's it. He’s made his decision and will think no more on it.

How, she wants to ask, how do you have such faith in me? How do you know with such assurance that I’m even who you remember? Because she’s not, not that girl, may never have been that girl. She is not someone who can save him when she has barely been able to save herself. She's not beautiful or brilliant or kind, she’s a broken, angry thing knitted together with pain and fear and stubbornness and a costume made armor by the camouflage of her silence.

“You don't have to do it alone Frank,” she tells him instead. “Not anymore.”

She reaches up, threads her fingers through his hair, stroking against his scalp until he sighs, leans into her touch, until his eyes begin to slip closed, craving her, craving more of her, always. “Neither do you.”

She tries to stifle the gasp that slips past her lips as his words hit somewhere she didn't know she was weak, didn't know she needed armor. “I know,” she finally tells him when she’s able to speak past the knot of something hard, something that feels like fear that has settled in her throat.

“Then prove it,” he says softly, lips ghosting over hers, one hand brushing against her cheek, forehead tilting forward to meet hers. “Prove it Laurel. Cause I will if you will.”

It's not perfect, she thinks, not nearly what they need. But it's good enough for now. It's good enough to start, _start over,_ to move forward, together. It's not perfect, but neither are they and Laurel thinks that maybe, maybe, it’ll be enough. And when Frank’s lips meet hers, slow and sweet and yearning, it feels like a promise, it feels like a vow, it feels like an apology and a declaration, like hunger and worship, like sinking beneath the waves, warm and enveloping and the rest of the world goes muted, distant and hazy, like stepping out into a summer storm, warm and violent and soothing. It feels like forgiveness, feels like a question.

Yeah, she thinks, it may not be enough, may not be enough to erase the past and the looming uncertain future, but it's a start and she's willing to try, willing to make a go of it if he is. The odds are against them, have always been against them, but they've both beaten those odds more times than she can even hope to count, and neither of them are about to start hedging their bets now. Five years and a million and a half people in Philly and he winds up on her case list, winds up back in her life.

Yeah, she thinks, she’ll take those odds, put her money down and see where it gets her. She doesn't know where it will end up, doesn't know what the future holds for them, but, as she kisses him again, grins against his lips, feels a laugh slipping from his chest into hers, breathing in the familiar scent of him, she thinks that’s alright, that's alright, because for the first time in what feels like forever, she _feels right_ , feels like she’s not telling herself a lie when she thinks it. She’s not stupid enough, not naïve enough to think that Frank will solve all her problems for her, will beat back the creeping darkness, will fix the things in her that have been broken, _shattered_ , since before she can remember, but maybe, maybe, having him with her, beside her, will make it a little easier for Laurel to fight her own battles, the ones she can't avoid, make it a little easier to walk away from the ones she can. He makes those broken parts less painful, makes her think that it's ok they’re broken, that maybe it's not the worst thing in the world. That's the best she can hope for, but yeah, yeah, maybe, she thinks, as something in her heart begins to thaw, something she didn't even know was frozen, if she has Frank, if he has her, it’ll be enough to make a start.

So she smiles back, soft and still sharp-edged and she knows her eyes flash with the challenge of it.

“I will,” she assures him, and her smile slips wider because it feels like a vow, like an oath, it feels like their future and their past dropping away until it's just her and Frank and not the thousands of doubts and memories and fears that follow them around like shadows. It feels like maybe, finally, for the first time, the two of them have a chance. “I do.”

A fighting chance; nothing will ever be so easy as to come to the two of them without a fight, without struggle, without conflict, but still, Laurel thinks, still, it’s a chance all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's the end of that one. I wanted to end it on a kind of ambiguous/tentative/hopeful note (because that seems to be my thing), and here's hoping I've acheived that.   
> Lemme know what y'all think... :)  
> Dunno when Frank'll be back on the show, but hopefully it won't be five years like in this fic...

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the Josh Ritter song "Come and Find Me"


End file.
